Joshua Filler wins inaugural UK Open
The German beat Francisco Sánchez Ruíz in the final, 13-7, and ran a five-pack to end the match.
As the cue ball slowed to a stop behind the four-ball in the 15th rack of the UK Open final, Joshua Filler nodded faintly in acceptance. He kept in his hand the jump cue he’d just used to knock in the one-ball and walked around the table to line up another airborne shot, this time on the two-ball.
He easily leapt the blocker, but over-cut the object ball badly. Coming back up-table off the bottom rail though, the two knocked into the six-ball beside the left side-pocket and fell in. The cue ball, meanwhile, slid across the table into near-perfect short-side position for the three-ball. Filler held up his hand immediately in apology to his Spanish opponent, Francisco Sánchez Ruíz, who had seen his 7-5 lead disappear and now expected to fall behind once more.
Taking advantage of his good fortune, Filler never let Sánchez Ruíz back to the table in the final. The German broke-and-ran the final five racks to win the inaugural UK Open title, 13-7. He overcame some sloppy position-play and grinded out a third-straight trophy in Matchroom Nineball events he’s played in. He won the Treviso Open to begin May then the World Pool Masters (compiling the most dominant run in tournament history) before skipping last week’s Bucharest Open.
With Sunday’s performance, Filler has now reached the final of all but one of the Matchroom events he’s entered this year. He finished runner-up at the Derby City Classic 9-Ball, Premier League Pool and Lasko Open to begin 2022. Then, he suffered a quarterfinals loss to Albin Ouschan at the World Pool Championship, but bounced back immediately with his aforementioned run since the start of May.
It’s not even halfway through the year, but barring a win at the US Open for either Shane Van Boening or Fedor Gorst, I’d feel comfortable guaranteeing Filler will be AzBilliards Player of the Year for 2022. He’s also still got a chance to pick up four more major tournament wins before the end of the year and goes into each as the favorite.
He’ll represent Germany with Thorsten Hohmann at the World Cup of Pool. Then in October, he’ll attempt to win his second career US Open title. A month after that, the European Open will be played in his native country. And as Jayson Shaw joked after the UK Open final, Filler is likely already a lock for the Mosconi Cup in December, which the Europeans are favored in.
When I wrote about Ouschan’s 2021 campaign, I noted how he found ways to win and make deep runs at tournaments he wasn’t playing the best at. Ouschan did exactly that to Filler at the Premier League Pool final. It seems Filler learned from that moment and incorporated Ouschan’s calculated style into his own game.
Sunday’s final didn’t receive the typical free-flowing Filler from the start. Down 5-3, Filler worked hard just to get back to the table for a clean shot in the ninth frame. Luck rolled his way eventually in the safety battle as he flirted with a scratch in the corner pocket, but the cue ball pulled up at the last second and sat inside the point. Later when he trailed 7-5, Filler played a containing safety which led to a mistake from FSR enabling Filler’s final comeback. Then to finish it off, he did show off his shot-making to break-and-run five times in a row. It was the complete package.
On his chair in the corner of the arena where he’d sat for nearly the last half-an-hour, Sánchez Ruíz slightly shook his head as Filler cleared up in the final rack. There wasn’t much FSR did wrong throughout the match. Filler just found an extra gear only a handful of players in the world have.
Other notes
Firstly, this week had a lot of free pool that got streamed on Facebook and YouTube. That’s essential for growing the sport, so props to Matchroom for making that happen and still producing quality broadcasts.
On the subject of broadcasts, something needs to be done about DAZN. For everyone (myself included) that bought DAZN to stream the weekend matches, it was a shock to see that they were broadcasting just about everything but pool. Seriously, on Saturday when I checked they had the women’s Champions League final, darts, boxing and some sort of Red Bull racing series but absolutely nothing for the UK Open.
With all the goodwill Matchroom has created with its pool coverage over the past few years, having a hiccup on the DAZN coverage this week is very minor in the grand scheme of things. What I did have more of a problem with was only broadcasting one table over the weekend, even during the quarterfinals.
The TV audience largely missed out on the best quarterfinal match, a hill-hill thriller between Filler and Aleksa Pecelj, aside from occasional updates. Obviously I don’t understand the technical side of things so I’m sure there was a good reason it wasn’t broadcast, but I know I’d take even a single standing camera view of the second table with no commentary and honestly, no scoreboard would still be acceptable at bare minimum (which is what the highlights were like anyway! So I don’t understand why that camera couldn’t just be livestreamed).
If Matchroom wants to drive more fans to its paid platforms, I understand that, too. But then at least make multiple tables available on those paid platforms. DAZN’s subscription price is not cheap, especially given how little content it actually has, so it really should be maximized for pool, which means as many tables broadcast as possible.