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BILLIARDS – Bahrain’s Haider Maroom barged into the quarter-finals yesterday of the Saudi Junior Championship 2025, currently being held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The $20,000 competition is taking place alongside the ongoing World Pool Championship 2025, and it began with a field of 16 entrants from around the world.
Maroom secured his place in the elite eight after defeating Liao Hung-Yen of Chinese Taipei 7-5 yesterday in his second match of the losers’ qualification bracket. He had earlier won 7-1 against Laksh Sharma of India, which came after losing his opening contest of the competition 2-7 to Ziad Alqabani of Saudi Arabia.
Haider is next set to take on Alqabani once again in the quarters. It will be a race-to-seven contest. The victor will move on to face the winner of the other last eight clash between Pius Baier of Germany and Abdullah Alqabani of Saudi.
The two other quarter-final matches see Hermeneanu Evan of Romani take on Saudi’s Ibrahem Khazindar and Albert Januarta of Poland face off with Kuwait’s Ahmed Altattan.
Meanwhile, Haider’s brother Hussain Maroom was in action late last night against Mauricio Garcia of Peru in his second match of the losers’ qualification bracket in stage one of the World Pool Championship 2025.
Maroom was the underdog heading into his contest against Garcia, who is a World Pool Association wildcard entrant. The affair was played into the night, missing our deadlines.
The Bahraini youngster secured his match-up with Garcia after beating Kuo Po Cheng of Chinese Taipei 9-6 in his first assignment of the losers’ bracket. Hussain had previously kicked off his campaign in the worlds with a 3-9 defeat to world number 82 Jani Uski of Finland.
The winner of the clash will move on to the worlds’ last 64, which is officially the first round of stage two. Those matches will be played in race-to-11 format, which will continue until the semi-finals. The gold medal contest will be held race-to-15.
Hussain is the only Bahraini competing in the prestigious $1 million tournament, which is the flagship event of the World Nineball Tour. He is playing amongst the world’s best for the second successive year.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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