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Pagulayan win signals RP return to top of Asian pool |
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Source : Staff
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Wednesday, 30 July 2008 11:30 |
 The amazing victory last Sunday of former World Pool champion Alex Pagulayan over world No. 1 Dennis Orcollo in an all-Filipino final in the Singapore leg of the 2008 Guinness 9-Ball Tour showed once more that the Philippines is set to regain billiards supremacy from rival Chinese Taipei.
Pagulayan’s triumph snapped Chinese Taipei’s string of successes in the Guinness Tour. Last year, Chinese Taipei players swept the six-leg tour and, this year, has won the first three (through Chang Jung-ling) before Pagulayan stopped the Taiwanese juggernaut.
In their one-on-one rivalry, the Philippines leads Chinese Taipei by the slimmest of margins, 13-12. No other Asian entry has ever won on the tour, which started in 2003.
In 2006, the Philippines, sparked by Hall of Famer Efren “Bata” Reyes, swept the Asian tour, then called the San Miguel Asian 9-Ball Tour. Reyes captured two legs while fellow veteran internationalists Ramil Gallego and Rodolfo Luat won one leg each.
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Pagulayan, who is also known in pool circles as “The Lion” (he once admitted that he has “a face that looks like a lion,” hence the moniker), sent me highlights of his career.
The 30-year-old native of Cabagan, Isabela, also enclosed a copy of his libel complaint against Yen Macabenta and Ernesto Fajardo, chair and president, respectively, of the Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines (BSCP).
He filed the criminal complaints against the two officials because the two accused him of grave misconduct and of “sharking” his opponent in last year’s Singapore leg of the tour without bothering to hear his side.
In pool circles, a “shark” refers to a player who employs unethical ways to distract his opponent.
Officials of the Guinness tournament did not find anything wrong with Pagulayan’s behavior during his semifinal encounter with Malaysia’s Ibrahim Amir which the Filipino lost. Neither did the organizer, ESPN, find any wrongdoing on the part of Pagulayan.
But according to the BSCP, “Pagulayan’s antics amounted to sharking. So gross were his actions that in the end, Ibrahim repaid him in kind.”
Pagulayan is a professional billiard player known throughout the world for his exceptional skills and flamboyant personality. It is also noteworthy to mention the fact that even though he has given the country the greatest honors in the game of pool, Pagulayan has not bothered to ask the government for any financial assistance.
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