“I don’t have enough training time because I work in construction, but I will work harder with a challenging spirit.” The men’s division of the professional billiards PBA Tour ‘S-Y PBA Championship’, which ended on the 11th, was ‘Spain’s 3-cushion powerhouse
’ ‘ It ended with David Martinez (Crown Haitai)’s fourth win in total.
However, there was one player who received the most attention in this competition. It was Park Ki-ho (48), an unknown billiards player. Park Ki-ho overturned everyone’s expectations in this tournament and created a sensation by advancing to the semifinals. He successively beat top domestic and foreign players such as Kang Dong-gung (SK Rent-a-Car), Chan Chhapaak (Blue One Resort), and Lee Sang-dae (Welcome Savings Bank).
In the semifinals against Yusuke Mori (Japan), Park Ki-ho was on the verge of victory. The set score was 3-1 until the 4th set. If we won just one more set, we could advance to the finals. The 5th set also led 10-6. However, he allowed Mori to catch up and lost the set at 14-15, and ended the storm by losing the 6th and 7th sets.
In an interview with Edaily, Park Ki-ho confessed, “I wasn’t greedy until then, but the moment I thought about going to the finals, I got greedy. I let my guard down and the game started to go wrong.” In addition, he said humbly, “Honestly, I never even thought I could beat a presidential candidate like Kang Dong-gung,” and “I think I got a lot of luck.”
As he said, just getting to the semifinals was a miracle for Park Ki-ho. Park Ki-ho was a player whose name was little known in the billiards world. He came across billiards by chance in high school and became a billiards fan for 30 years. He won several championships in club billiards. He himself was satisfied with his club activities without any great greed.
However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the club competitions were halted all at once. Park Ki-ho, who was more serious about billiards than anyone else, was worried. Meanwhile, the professional billiards PBA continued to hold competitions even during the pandemic. Keen to continue playing his billiards, he took the 2021 tryout and debuted on the Challenge Tour, the third division of his career. He immediately won the championship after four tours. He went on to win, ranked second in the final rankings, and went straight to the first division tour.
The bar for the first part of the tour was high. Until this tournament, reaching the round of 16 once was the best result. Last season, they ranked 95th and were in danger of relegation. However, he placed 14th at Q School and dramatically remained in Division 1. By advancing to the semifinals in this competition, we have laid the foundation for continued performance in the first division.
In fact, Park Ki-ho has a separate main job. He is a technician who sweats at a construction site. He is in charge of tasks such as plastering and waterproofing. His home is Ansan, Gyeonggi-do, but he rushes to anywhere in the country where there is a construction site. This time, he also postponed his construction work for a while to participate in the competition, and when the competition ended, he went straight down to the site.
In reality, it is not easy to combine construction work with a career as a professional billiards player. Park Ki-ho said, “Compared to other professional players, his training volume is absolutely insufficient. “I’m not a person who plays billiards for a living,” he said. “On the contrary, I think I have nothing to lose and try to play comfortably, so there are times when I get better at it.”
Park Ki-ho does not put down the billiard cue even when his body is exhausted after hard work. When he is in the countryside due to work, he visits a nearby billiards hall and practices for an hour or two. However, due to the nature of his job, he uses a lot of force on his arms and shoulders, so he says it is not easy to maintain his senses, including strength control. Park Ki-ho said, “When a competition is approaching, I cram for about 4 to 5 days and practice hard to raise my senses to the maximum.”온라인카지노
Advancement to the semifinals brought a big change to Park Ki-ho’s billiards life. Park Ki-ho has never received formal lessons from anyone before. He just played a lot in the billiards hall, where he learned the skills and developed his senses on his own. But he keenly felt that he needed someone’s help to rise higher. So he started taking his first lessons at a late age.
Ki-ho Park confessed, “Because I had been playing alone, it was difficult to explain theoretically even if it was a ball I could hit,” and “Now, I thought that I had to prepare a little more systematically to survive on the professional stage.”
Ki-ho Park, born in 1975 and looking to turn 50, is as excited as someone learning to play billiards for the first time. He said, “I wanted to take on a real challenge at least once in my life, and I think now is the time.” He added, “I plan to keep climbing to see how far I can go. “I want to prepare a little more systematically and try to win,” he said, laughing.