Two Back-to-Back Tournaments in Sigulda for Alex G.

On April 3 and April 7 Alex took part in two 9 ball tournaments in the beautiful Latvian town of Sigulda. Again, a lot of surprise for people around in the club seeing such a young lad playing on a good level.
The first tournament, the Cup of Sigulda, started with a round robin stage, so Alex had plenty of matches to enjoy.
This tournament attracted strong players nationwide, so, unfortunately, Alex lost all of his matches. He had a great fight in the first two matches against Raimonds Baldis and Rudolfs Zvaigzne. In both matches it was a tight game, being tied at 2:2. Then the pressure mounted on Alex and in one of the games he even potted the 9 together with the cue ball in a somewhat easy position. In the other 2 matches against Guntars Timermanis and Eduards Volegovs Alex didn’t have too many chances and lost 1:4 and 0:4.
Amazingly, on this tournament Alex learned to better control himself during the shots. In all his previous tournaments he forgot about the right shot preparation technique and started running around the table and shooting balls with just 1-2 preparatory strokes. After this tournament we discussed how better players do it and from now on Alex puts in his best shot preparation technique in the game. Just have a look at the videos from the second tournament!
The other tournament, a regular weekly league, was held at the same venue mostly with local players on Thursday evening. Again, the tournament started with the round robin games. This time there were 3 games for Alex. At the start he lost to Rudolfs Zvaigzne once again (this time 1:3).
Then there was a clash with Janis Brisons. Alex showed some good game in the first 2 games and went ahead 2:0. The first game was over very soon as he potted a difficult combo 1-9 (see the videos for this amazing shot). Then the pressure started mounting on Alex again as he lost the next 2 games and it went to the decider. Game quality decreased very significantly, as you might imagine under pressure. Alex wasn’t able to pot a long 9 ball and left a pottable ball (though not an easy one) to the opponent. Luckily, Janis missed and Alex won the match!
You should have seen the joy on Alex’s face! He was jumping around with his hands in the air as if he just won the World Championships! Great emotions and the whole club was applauding to him!
The final game agains Renars Veidemanis started well - Alex got the first game and went ahead 1:0. However, the pressure was still with him and kept mounting. Alex started missing position and made mistakes on his safeties. No wonder that he lost 1:3 and unfortunately was out of the tournament. Anyway, this was a good result for him - 9th shared place overall out of 17 contestants.
So, now our next goal is to help Alex learn to control his emotions. This is a very difficult task even for adults, but I am sure that his trainer Sergey Sergeyev from Snooker Academy Latvia, multiple times champion of national and international tournaments, will help him with his mind game.
Will keep posting - Alex’s next tournament will be very soon!