Alex Pagulayan crawled out of his personal slump right on the very same day he pronounced his patriotism.
Pagulayan, whether he is playing under the flag of Canada or Philippines, zoomed to the round of 64 just the same, blanking Eritrea’s Hamza Mohammed Saeed Ali, 9-0, on a day of ironies in the 2007 World Pool Championship (WPC) yesterday at the Araneta Coliseum.
The Fil-Canadian Pagulayan put on a show under the “winner break format,” never giving Saeed Ali any chance to score in a lopsided contest which he complemented with a 9-6 trouncing of Austria’s Martin Kempter.
That enabled Pagulayan to join other noted Filipino cue artists like Francisco “Django” Bustamante, Ramil Gallego and Lee Van Corteza in the next phase of this prestigious annual tourney where the champion stands to receive $100,000 out of the total $400,000 cash prizes at stake.
Bustamante survived the so-called “Group of Death” after trouncing Vaic Zybnek of Russia, 9-4, then scored a shutout over Jeong Young-hwa of South Korea, 9-0, while Gallego won over Chan Keng Kwang of Singapore, 9-4, and Chang Jung Ling of Taipei, 9-1 in an utter show of the Filipinos’ brilliance in billiards.
Corteza also made a twinkill late in the night, beating out Chang Pei-wei of Chinese Taipei, 9-4, and American Jeremy Jones, also 9-4, to advance to next Wednesday’s round of 64.
Last year’s semifinalist, Antonio Lining, unfortunately, fell prey to former US Open champion Corey Deuel, 7-9, in the preliminaries of the terrible Group 9 to kiss the tournament goodbye.
An entry in the drawsheet bearing what seemed to be an error in Pagulayan’s nationality somehow created confusion, but Pagulayan clarified that his Canadian status in the tournament’s official draw sheet disseminated to both local and foreign media was just a typographical error.
“No, I might be shot (here) if I do not play for the Philippines,” Pagulayan said in jest as he flashes his identification card identifying him as a Filipino. “It was just a mistake. If you look at the (tournament’s official) Web site or any other collaterals, I am still playing for the Philippines. Look, even my ID says I’m a Filipino.”
And against the highly persistent Kempter, the chink in Pagulayan’s armor was quite obvious as the Austrian gave him a scare by rallying from two racks behind only to be foiled by the hometown hero down the stretch.
“When you’re on a slump, it’s really hard to find your groove. Sometimes it’s hard to win, you cannot do anything about it. But just keep playing, because you’re game will surely come,” said Pagulayan, whose parents migrated to Canada when he was 15.
Pagulayan reportedly refused to play for the flag in the 24th Southeast Asian Games and threatened to bolt out of Team Philippines after having a dispute with BSCP president Ernesto Fajardo over the latter’s decision not to field the 29-year-old temperamental pool star in the final leg of the 2007 Guiness Asian 9-ball tour in Singapore.
