Stylish Italians Looking Good at Billiards

Stylish Italians Looking Good at BilliardsItaly's billiard team turned on the style to cruise into the second round of the PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool.The Italian pairing of Fabio Petroni and Angelo Millauro comfortably won 9-2 to set up a match in the last 16 against highly-rated Finland, the tournament's seventh seeds. “We played great, fantastic,” said Petroni. "The game looked easy because they got unlucky and missed a few balls at the start of the match. That made it look easy but it never was.“If we play like that we have a chance of beating Finland as we only missed two or three balls.Who do you think will win? Discuss World Cup of Pool here.“I don’t think they are one of the tournament favourites. Mika Immonen is a great player but what about Ortmann and Engert (Germany), Feijen and van den Berg (Holland), Reyes and Bustamante (Philippines) and Morris and Strickland (USA).”
Italy, the tenth seeds, won the lag and ran through the opening rack to move into an early lead. They extended their advantage soon afterwards when South African Yulan Govender over-cut an attempt to slide the black eight down the rail and that mistake was punished by the tenth seeds.The Italians would have a won a competition for most stylish looking team as they wore matching shirts with Italia 9 on the back and they were looking good on the table as well as Millauro pocketed the 9-ball to seal another rack to move 3-0 ahead.South Africa were not having much luck on their breaks and when they came up dry, only the second time that had happened in the tournament so far, they looked like falling 4-0 behind.But Millauro missed a shot at the pink four, although Anderson then did exactly the same and the Italians were in no mood to let another chance pass by and Millauro sunk the 9 for their fourth successive rack.Having the break again, Italy were never in any danger during the fifth, which they won comfortably, as the prospect of only the second 9-0 victory of the competition grew larger.South Africa had a chance to gain their first rack of the game in the next but lost position going from green six to brown seven and a spectacular one-rail bank on the same ball from Petroni looked to make it 6-0.However, Millauro then missed the black eight before Govender scratched from his next shot to gift-wrap the rack to the Italians for a 6-0 lead.A fortunate deflection off the 9-ball took the pink four into the top right hand corner as it became clear it was Italy’s day as it become 7-0 with South Africa now just playing for pride.The South Africans managed to secure just that as they chalked up their first rack of the tournament as David Anderson slotted the crucial 9-ball to give the scoreline a bit of respectability.But that proved to be a brief respite as Italy moved to the hill by winning the next and they should have wrapped up the but Millauro missed a shot for the match and left the 9-ball hanging over the pocket and the South Africans could not believe their luck to win only their second rack.This only delayed the inevitable and Italy took the next to claim a comfortable 9-2 victory. Despite the impressive performance, Petroni remained sceptical about Italy ’s hopes of lifting the trophy.“We have a small chance of winning it,” said Petroni. "If we win it I would be really surprised but you never know. You need to be lucky but we do not have the experience to win a competition like this.“Our game is not so bad but we have never won a big tournament.”

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