BILLIARDS remains as one of the Philippines’ cup of tea and a Filipina cue ace finally fulfilled a long-cherished dream yesterday.
Rubilen Amit turned back former champion Siming Chen of China 3-1 (1-4, 4-2, 4-2, 4-3) to rule the WPA World Nine-Ball Women’s Championship at the Claudelands Events Centre in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Pouncing on her fancied Chinese foe’s crucial mistakes, Amit’s historic triumph made her richer by $50,000 (P2.7 million) while becoming the first Pinay pool star to win it all in the prestigious tilt sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association and organized by the Predator Pro Billiard Series.
A native of Mandaue City, Cebu, Amit previously stamped her mark in the World 10-Ball Championship in 2009 and repeated the feat four years later, both in Manila.
She joined a special group of Filipino men 9-Ball world champions that include Efren “Bata” Reyes (1999), Alex Pagulayan (2004), Francisco “Django” Bustamante (2010), and Carlo Biado (2017).
The road to the Promised Land was not a walk in the park for Amit. She hurdled compatriot Chezka Centeno in the last 16, Chinese Taipei’s Wei Tzu-Chien in the quarterfinals, and Russia’s Kristina Tkach in the semifinals.
Chen, who settled for the runner-up purse of $30,000, took the opening set and seemed poised to wrest a commanding 2-0 lead when she hid the one-ball behind the seven-ball in a seemingly cunning safety shot.
But Amit took an ace from the legendary Reyes’ sleeves when she carefully protected the one-ball while sending the cue ball leisurely rolling back and bumping the nine-ball straight down the right center pocket to save the point and the set and forge a 1-1 count.
Amit zoomed to a 2-1 edge but Chen, the 2007 champion and a finalist in the 2011 and 2014 editions of the tourney, rallied in the fourth set by winning the next two games for a 3-2 lead and looked poised to extend the battle to a deciding set.
But the Chinese missed an easy corner shot for the eight ball, enabling Amit to tie the count at 3-3 in the race-to-four games, best-of-five sets duel.
Amit’s safety on the one-ball to start the seventh game forced Chen to commit a foul and the Filipina simply sank the one-ball and wiped the rest of the rack.
When the dust settled, Amit held back tears after pocketing the nine-ball and roared in frenzy–finally hitting pay dirt after a bridesmaid finish in 2007 and a pair of semifinal stints in 2018 and 2019.
Amit raised her stick, gave the referee, Chen and Centeno hugs amid the cheers of a small Filipino crowd in the venue whose “Philippines” banners remained fluttering until the end.
