Crimson Crux

The Philippines’ own Ronato “Ronnie” Alcano defeated Germany’s Ralf Souquet, 17 racks to 11, to win this year’s World Pool Championship held in Manila, Philippines.

Alcano displayed superb and dominating cue artistry that drew exuberant reactions from the hometown crowd and impressed the match commentators. One foreign commentator remarked that if they were to make a highlight reel of Ronnie’s beautiful shots, it’d be an hour long.

The soft-spoken Alcano was a pre-tournament longshot and was barely able to make it past the group eliminations, having lost his first two matches. In every sense of the phrase, Alcano’s win was the culmination of a dream ride. To top it off, he raised his arms in glory along with hundreds of his countrymen.

Aside from bagging $100,000 and the distinction of being the world’s best billiards player (at least for the year), Ronnie seems to have gotten a new nickname — “the Volcano”. Quite weird, if you ask me…but then, who cares. The guy is the pool champion, and that is what’s important.

The official site of the 2006 Philippines World Pool Championship has a rack by rack summary of the final match.

The Philippines as WPC Venue

The spacious (that’s an understatement) venue of the billiards matches, the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), proved itself to be a great place for the WPC. The commentators couldn’t help repeatedly mentioning how they liked the PICC, even stating that the place seems to have been built for billiards matches.

I especially liked the coverage of NBN-4 and ESPN, which showed several landmarks and tourist destinations of the metropolis and the whole country. I believe it was the initiative of the Department of Tourism, along with the local sponsors of the world-class billiards event.

Better than the tourism angle is the hospitality that the Filipino audience extended to the foreign cue artists, even those who were going up against the hometown heroes. Sure there were some Pinoy hecklers (what a shame), but these were quickly (and eagerly) shhhh’d up by their compatriots.

The moment I won’t forget was when Ralf Souquet was being interviewed on-site after losing the match. His voice seemed to have been breaking, and in my opinion he was on the verge of having his emotions well up as tears. You know what the chiefly Filipino audience did?

They cheered Souquet, the shouts starting out with a few people, then building up to a crescendo where the whole venue was rocking with “Souquet, Souquet, Souquet!”. That’s Filipino hospitality for you.

All in all, the 2006 World Pool Championship was a great nine days for the Philippine nation.