Just as everybody was expecting the men’s semi-finals to be closely contested, the opposite happened and both Chang Jung-Lin and Joshua Filler ran out the easiest of winners, with the scores of 11/2 & 11/3 respectively. With both players in great form, the final just had to be a close contest, but again one player was clearly superior. In this case it was the new kid on the block, Joshua Filler of Germany. Most people thought the experience and talent of Chang would have been too much for a youngster like Filler to be able to handle in the final of a major tournament for his first time, but he proved them all wrong winning comfortably 11/6.
The women’s final was also expected to be close, but when Chen Siming jumped away to lead 7/3 against two time world champion Liu Shasha in a race to 9, it looked like being an early night. The roll of the ball was against Shasha with nothing going right, then Chen made an unforced error and the change came about. Shasha won the next 3 racks to make it 7/6, then Chen won and it was now 8/6, but Shasha fought back after Chen made an illegal break and won the next two and evened the score at 8/8. Visibly shaken, Shasha was hot favourite for the title she was defending, but Chen gathered her emotions, made a good break and was able to run the rack and claim first prize.
