On a couch to victory

At last year's Austrian Snooker Open in Salzburg, Matthew Couch suffered a shock defeat by Austria's Roman Wiesinger, who won their best-of-five match 3-1. But this year, 31-year-old Couch was not in the mood for any surprises of that kind. The Scunthorpe based professional never got in trouble in any of his matches, and he worked his way through the four day tournament with a remarkable ease. Nothing could stop him from becoming the new Austrian Snooker Open champion.

Couch won his three group matches without dropping a single frame. In the last 32, Ebrahim Baghi from Vienna was the first one not to be whitewashed [3-1], but Couch then marched on to squeeze past Alexander Pichler 3-0 and Sascha Lippe 4-1, and set up a semi-final clash with last year's winner Mark King. This highly-awaited match, however, did not fulfill the expectations. King never found to his usual rhythm, and showed signs of frustration as he was kept off the table for almost the entire match. Couch knocked in four breaks over fifty and sent the defending champion home 5-0.

In the other semi-final, last year's runner-up Lee Richardson got beaten 5-1 by Patrik Einsle, beyond doubt the biggest upset of the tournament. The final then turned out to be a quite one-sided match as well. Although the first four frames were shared [2-2], Einsle could not make life really difficult for Couch, who stepped up a gear and rushed into a 5-2 lead. A nice 69 break in the eighth frame finally earned him the title and the winner's cheque of € 1800.

So, Couch, number 71 on the provisional world rankings, became the more than deserved winner of this year's Austrian Snooker Open. In eight matches played, he dropped just four frames and scored fourteen breaks over 50. One of them, a magnificent 136 total clearance in his quarter-final against Lippe, earned him the highest break price of € 600 as well.

The Austrian contenders had less to cheer about. In front of their home crowd, they could not repeat their good achievements from last year, when Hans Nirnberger ended up in fifth place. This time, Nirnberger was knocked out in the last 16 by Mark King [0-3]. In the same stage, all other remaining Austrian players had to leave the tournament as well: Alexander Pichler [0-3 to Matthew Couch], Robert Bütof [0-3 to Patrik Einsle] and Dieter Simoncsics [1-3 to Hans Blankaert]. Austria's current number one, Garry Balter, had already found his Waterloo one round earlier [1-3 to Germany's Karl-Heinz Beggel].

The € 10.000 tournament in Salzburg took place in a huge shopping mall, as Europark had become the new main sponsor of the event. This venue turned out to be a good promotion for the snooker sport in Austria. During the first two days of play, the stores were open as usual, so some 60.000 visitors of the shopping mall got in contact with the game of snooker by accident. Europark aims to host the event again in 2007.

In the next report on Austria's snooker scene, we travel to Salzburg again, where the sixteen best players of the year get together for this season's final tournament, the annual Österreichische Meisterschaft.

AUSTRIAN SNOOKER OPEN 2006
[Salzburg, 28/04 - 01/05]

Results:

quarter-finals:
Mark King [GB] - Lasse Münstermann [G] 4-2
Matthew Couch [GB] - Sascha Lippe [G] 4-1
Patrik Einsle [G] - Jazek Rudowicz [P] 4-0
Lee Richardson [GB] - Hans Blankaert [B] 4-0

semi-finals:
Couch - King 5-0
Einsle - Richardson 5-1

final:
Couch - Einsle 6-2

Break list:

- 136 Matthew Couch [GB]
- 117, 105, 97 Mark King [GB]
- 91 Couch
- 88 Lee Richardson [GB]
- 87, 87, 86 Couch
- 85 Richardson, Patrik Einsle [G] 

Click here for full tournament results.

©  text: Eric Willemsen [Vienna]