Aditya Mehta heads into the 2017 World Games in Poland as defending champion and the Indian will be optimistic of his chances of clinching the gold medal once again. The World Games, which is a global multi-sport festival of events featuring sports not included in the Olympic Games, is being staged in Wroclaw and this will be the fifth time since the 2001 Akita Games that cue sports are involved. Carom billiards and 9-ball pool competitions will be played out for a gold medal, as well as a 15-red snooker tournament in which Mehta is the reigning champion, having defeated Liang Wenbo in Colombia four years ago.
The 31-year-old, who became the first Indian player to make an official 147 maximum break at the 2014 Paul Hunter Classic, is one of six professionals in the 16-person field. His first round clash will be against 21-year-old Pole Kacper Filipiak, who has two amateur wins under his belt, with the contest taking place on Wednesday afternoon. Mehta is in decent form heading into the match, having defeated England’s Robbie Williams 5-4 in qualifying round one of the China Championship back in June. The defending champion should prove to have too much for his opponent, who will be backed by the home crowd, but any slip-ups could be punished with the matches only best-of-five frames.
Victory for Mehta would set-up a quarter-final clash against either China’s Xu Si, who is one of the six professionals in the field, or Pakistan amateur Mohammad Bilal. Round one draw in full: Ali Carter (England) v Shaun Dalitz (Australia) Wendy Jans (Belgium) v Declan Brennan (Northern Ireland) Soheil Vahedi (Iran) v Peter Francisco (South Africa) Andrew Pagett (Wales) v Alexander Ursenbacher (Switzerland) Ng On Yee (Hong Kong) v Michael Judge (Ireland) Kyren Wilson (England) v Andres Petrov (Estonia).
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