The World Pool Masters are underway at the Hotel Zuiderduin in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, with 16 male players vying for wold dominance in straight-knockout, single-elimination 9-ball.

Of the 16 players, nine are Europeans: Nick van den Berg, Alex Lely and Neils Feijen of Holland, Thomas Engert and Ralf Souquet of Germany, and Ronnie O’Sullivan, Steve Davis, Imran Majid and Raj Hundal of England. The remainder of the field was filled out by Wu Chia-ching of the Chinese Taipei, Hiroshi Takenaka of Japan, Efren Reyes and Alex Pagulayan of the Philippines and Rodney Morris as the lone American.

The first-round began today (June 16) and so far, defending champion Hundal eliminated Hiroshi Takenaka, 8-5, while Feijen sent Morris packing, 8-3. Feijin’s win will put him in the quarterfinal with Hundal on Saturday evening.

Morris, who reached the final of last year’s event, said: “I felt good but with the alternate-break format I couldn’t come back when I went down a couple of games.”

Meanwhile, Foldes nabbed a nail-biter match against van den Berg, 7-8. The back-and-forth match was at hill-hill when Foldes broke and ran out for the win, much to the dismay of the Dutch crowd.

“I’m delighted to have won. It was a very tough game and either of us could have won it but in the end I kept it together to clear that last rack for victory,” Foldes said afterwards.