Ten Ball’s debut as an official tournament game in the Philippines and Asia met many expectations and hopes, and produced a few surprises. I think Ten Ball will be a keeper in international pool.

We’re thrilled that a Filipino – Antonio Gabica – emerged as champion in the finale of the Mandaluyong Mayor’s Cup last Sunday (May 11). But what gladdened us even more were the international field, the competitiveness of the tournament, the enthusiasm of the players for Ten Ball, the tightness of the matches, the resounding comeback of the power break, and the excitement that the winner’s break format produces. They are the stuff that long-term developments in our sport are built on.

The enthusiasm of Filipino players for the game we expected. Filipinos switched to Ten Ball from Rotation and Nine Ball as early as three years ago. What was a pleasant surprise was the equal eagerness and proficiency of foreign players in the new tournament game. The foreign field included Thorsten Hohmann of Germany, Johnny Archer of the United States, Gerry Watson of Canada, Courtney Symons of England, John Berille of France, Chung Chien-Te of Taiwan, and Satoshi Kawabata, Kenji Taguchi and Tomoo Takano of Japan.

We had some apprehension about how the new WPA rules for Ten Ball would pan out. The key innovations and departures from 9-Ball – call shot and a complicated safety rule – raised worries about how players would adjust. As things turned out, the players had no problem adjusting to the call shot. No player had to be penalized for forgetting to call a shot.

The only sticky issue was the safety rule as prescribed by the WPA. As originally written in the rules issued last January, a player at any time could call a safety while pocketing a ball legally. This concedes an enormous advantage to the player at the table, but fortunately the WPA hastened to amend it before our tournament started. The change is that when a ball is pocketed during a safety play, the incoming player has the option to give the table back to his opponent.

The amendment, though an improvement, still left a loophole for players to exploit, as Johnny and Thorsten explained to us. In the end, we had to tweak the rule some for the tournament. Based on our experience with the safety rule in the Mandaluyong Cup, we will send our recommendations to the WPA.

Our proposed change, concurred in by players and tournament officials alike, will simply say that whenever a ball is pocketed during a safety play or pocketed in the wrong pocket during a called shot, the incoming player can opt to either shoot or give the table back to his opponent.

The fuss over the safety rule only served to underscore the competitiveness of the tournament. All the players came to play. Two players who drew a lot of interest were a study in contrast: 18-year-old Jericho Banares, 2008 Philippine junior champion, and 58-year-old Gerry Watson, a veteran of pool tours in North America. Round after round, both bested players fancied as better than them, until finally they booked themselves a meeting against each other. When the smoke cleared in the junior-senior matchup, the teenager prevailed, 9-6.

“Who is this boy?” Gerry asked jokingly afterwards. “He doesn’t miss.”

The fact that four Filipinos wound up in the Final Four surprised many. Throughout the tournament, the foreign contingent looked quite formidable. Hohmann, Chung, Takano and Taguchi were looking solid in the winners’ bracket. Archer, Kawabata, Symons and Watson were battling back strongly from the losers’ bracket.

One crucial match may have made all the difference -- the clash for a Final Four slot between Hohmann and Marlon Manalo, which looked like a replay of their the IPT North American 8-Ball Championship finals. The duel went to hill-hill, with Hohmann breaking. But he could not close the deal. Had the match gone the other way, who knows what might have happened?

I think the most significant difference that Ten Ball introduces is the unpredictability of layouts after the break. Unlike 9-Ball, Ten Ball hardly ever produces a gimme after the break. Most of the time there are clusters and complicated layouts. Precise position play is demanded of the player to run out the table. And often the racks become intense defensive duels.

This reality of Ten Ball makes Gabica’s feat all the more exceptional. In his final two matches – against Banares in the semis and Manalo in the finals – he swept the final three racks by breaking and running out. No matter how complicated the table or thorny the clusters, he broke through. His opponents never got to shoot again each time.

This may be familiar to us in 9-ball, but in Ten Ball?

Gabica may not be known much internationally, especially in Europe and America. But over here in Manila, he’s remembered for performing tough feats. He finally took the Asian Games 9-ball gold medal for the Philippines from the Taiwanese in 2006, after his better-known compatriots had failed the previous eight years. He’s also the reigning Philippine 9-ball Open champion and has won the title twice. In his first open championship, where he beat Dennis Orcullo, he recorded 10 straight break runouts from the get-go. And he employed a hard break throughout.

Looking at the Mandaluyong Cup overall and its implications for the rest of the Philippine Pool Tour, we in the organizing committee have a quiet confidence about Ten Ball. The fans at the venue – from first day to last – loved the game, the competitiveness of the matches, and the thunderous power breaks. Audiences of the national and international TV coverage – yes, we had global coverage on the worldwide Filipino Channel and the Webcast – were quite enthralled. And the sponsors and partners who backed this inaugural event of the PPT liked what they saw.

The broadcast commentator Ted Lerner says that we have created “a nice template” for Ten Ball by the way we formatted, organized and ran the Mandaluyong Cup. From here we can replicate it throughout the PPT – tweak it here and there to improve it some more – and we should have a winner.

We hope so. This was the vision from the beginning – four PPT legs leading to the World Ten Ball Championship in September-October and monthly PPT tournaments afterwards all the way up to 2009. All international events.
Putting up a tournament is always a challenge, however, especially when you move from city to city, and venue to venue. But the fun is in the journey, in making it all happen. And we will surely try.