As he stood on the medal stand late Sunday afternoon at the Saalbau arena in Bottrop, Germany, Pei-Wei Chang still had a look of amazement on his face. The 26-year-old from Chinese Taipei was the recipient of the gold medal in Men’s 9-Ball at the 2005 World Games, in large part because he was the fortunate recipient of an unfortunate shot.
After making numerous errors in the final games of his gold-medal match against Thorsten Hohmann, allowing the German to make up a 10-6 deficit, Change sat helplessly watching Hohmann work his way carefully through the case rack. But the German undercut a simple shot at the 7 ball in the side pocket, handing the World Games gold to the thankful Taiwanese player.
“I was very, very lucky,” said Chang, runnerup to Alex Pagulayan at the 2004 World Pool Championship. “I gave the match to him, and he gave it back.”
Chang was joined by 18-year-old Austrian Jasmin Ouschan (Women’s 9-Ball), England’s Gerard Greene (Snooker) and Daniel Sanchez of Spain (Carom) as gold medalists, as the billiard competition concluded.
Ouschan, two-time European champion, handled error-prone Jennifer Chen of Chinese Taipei, 9-5, showing steely nerves and a razor-sharp game the belies her 19 years. The Austrian trailed 1-0 against Chen, but rolled out to a 7-2 lead, then buckled down for two solid run-outs to secure the match after Chen had fought back to 7-5.
Sanchez and Holland’s Dick Jaspers put on a nifty 3-cushion exhibition for the capacity crowd at the Saalbau, with Jaspers using a run of 11 to take an 18-14 lead after just four innings. The match stayed close throughout, with Sanchez scoring twice in the 15th inning to reach 40 points. Jaspers responded with three from the break in his half of the inning to tie the match and force a playoff. Each player started with an opening break, with the player who scores more points awarded the victory. Sanchez ran just two from the break shot, but won the match after Jasper’s cue ball froze to an object ball after his break shot. His futile attempt failed, and Sanchez, who won the gold medal at the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan, nabbed the top prize.
Greene, a 31-year-old, upset Chinese sensation Junhui Ding, in the snooker finale, rebounding from a 3-1 frame deficit to win, 4-3. The final frame was not decided until Greene banged home a cross-side shot on the green for a 71-45 win.
But it was the seesaw, emotionally draining Chang-Hohmann match that had the crowd buzzing. Confident and precise, Chang raced off to a 4-0 lead in the race-to-11. But a poor safety attempt in the fifth rack gave Hohmann a chance to loosen his powerful arm, and quickly the match was knotted at 4-4. Hohmann earned what would be his only lead at 5-4, then Chang returned to form and won four consecutive games for a seemingly insurmountable 10-6 lead. With alternating breaks, Chang would have at least three opportunities to close out the match. A scratch on the 1 ball turned into a two-game swing, as Hohmann cleared that rack, then ran out from the break to cut the lead to 10-8.
Chang then missed a long, but simple, shot on the 2, and the lead was down to a single game. Even after Hohmann scratched on his break in the next game, Chang failed to get out, hooking himself on the 4 ball and fouling on his kick attempt. In the case game, Chang opened with a soft 1-5 combination, but again he ended up hooked on his next shot. Chang barely clipped the 1, and left Hohmann a table-length cut on the 1 along the bottom rail. And when Hohmann sliced the 1 in, much to the delight of the partisan crowd, Chang’s fate appeared sealed.
But Hohmann left himself a thin cut on the 7 ball to the side pocket, and left the 7 dangling in the jaws. A shocked Chang carefully pocketed the final three balls for the gold medal.
