Cippenham Super 6 Senior 2-Star Open Championship (22.4.12)

by Graham Trimming

Unknown Koszo the champion

Eli Baraty and Zoltan Koszo met twice in the Cippenham Super 6 Senior 2-Star Open Championship on Sunday: in the very first and the very last match. Top seeded Baraty managed to just about stave off the threat from the hitherto unknown Hungarian in the opening match in the preliminary round group. In a taste of what was to come later, Baraty won the first, third and fifth games to get off to the perfect start. The only other time he faltered was when needing five games to overcome Adam Reed in the same group before topping his section and easing into the knock-out stages.

A further unknown player, Kiyonori Udagana, was another to cause an upset at the preliminary round stage. Despite only beating Mitchell Jones and Danny Lewis close in the fifth, he managed the same result to upstage second seed Zoltan Hosszu. There were other close games in the same group and all involved either Jones or Lewis. Both lost close in the fifth to Udagana while Jones beat Joao Botas 11-8 in the fifth and lost to Hosszu also in five. Not surprisingly, when Jones and Lewis met the result was 13-11 in the fifth with Jones emerging the victor.

Welshman Dean Cundy won Group 3 without being troubled too much while in Group 4 it was only Cippenham’s Ricky Hardcastle that stretched Nicholas Leung to a deciding leg.

Baraty continued unabated in the knock-out round to reach the final with 3-straight wins over Radovan Zivkovic and displaced second seed Zoltan Hosszu who had beaten Leung in the quarters. In the battle of the two players absent from the national ranking list, it was Koszo who easily defeated Udagana in his quarter-final to set up a semi-final encounter with Dean Cundy who had put paid to Rory Scott’s journey one round earlier. Kozso beat Cundy 3-2 to set up his second meeting of the day with Baraty.

Once again the match was decided over five ends but the result was different to the first encounter. This time it was the Hungarian Koszo who triumphed 3-2 (6-11, 11-7, 11-9, 13-15, 11-4).

The consolation event was won by Danny Lewis who beat Adam Reed 3-1 in the final.

The tournament was organised by Terry Boxall and refereed by Mick Strode.

Results:

	Winner:	Runner-up:
Open Singles	Zoltan Koszo (Mi)	Eli Baraty (He)
Open Consolation	Danny Lewis (He)	Adam Reed (Mi)