American ace derails Team QC title bid

American Charlie Williams downed Dennis Orcollo in the singles, 7-5, to foil Team Quezon City-Philippines’ bid to wrap up the championship in the QC-Philippines vs The World “The Grand Villards Showdown” at the Trinoma in Quezon City last night.

The win put the visiting squad back in the duel although it still trails the hosts, 7-8, heading to the deciding team events.

Alex “The Lion” Pagulayan, Francisco “Django” Bustamante, Dennis Orcollo and Roberto Gomez edged Chinese Taipei’s Wu Chia Ching and Yang Ching Shun, Finland’s Mika Immonen and India’s Raj Hundal in a hill-hill 7-6 victory in the team event to seize an 8-6 edge for Team

QC-RP.

But Williams stopped Orcollo in the next singles, sending the match into a 16th game and possibly a deciding duel if the visiting team forces a sudden death for the top $40,000 purse staked in the event hosted by Quezon City headed by Mayor Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte.

The team of Reyes, Ronnie Alcano, Warren Kiamco and Lee Van Corteza was playing the World’s Rodney Morris of the US, Hohmann, Fu Jian Bo of China and Williams at presstime for the clincher.

A loss by the hosts, however, will set the stake for the winner-take-all team match pitting Alcano, Pagulayan, Gomez and Kiamco against Morris, Wu, Williams and Hundal.

Earlier, Efren “Bata” Reyes and Bustamante pulled off a pair of come-from-behind victories to tie the count at 6 then Gomez came through with a 7-4 win over Chinese Taipei’s Yang Ching Shun to give the Filipinos their first taste of the lead after trailing in the first two days.

Reyes, the team’s skipper, scored a masterful 7-4 win over Morris in their singles clash while Bustamante pounced on a key miss by Indian snooker specialist Raj Hundal in the 13th and final rack to eke out a 7-6 hill-hill win to tie the match at 6.

“They (World) were celebrating and clapping their hands when they drew my name against Yang thinking that I’m an easy picking because I lost my first singles game badly,” said Gomez in Filipino referring to a 1-7 debacle he suffered at the hands of Wu Chia Ching of Chinese Taipei in Day 2.