Khalid Kamali, the UAE teenager, showed he is a quick learner as he joined his formidablecompatriots Mohammed Joker and Mohammed Shehab in the knockout stages of the 13-nation Second West Championships at the Concorde Fujairah hotel yesterday.
Kamali cracked his cue in his earlier game when he lost 4-2 to last runner-up Ahmed Saif. Taking positives from that game, he continued with the same cue to emerge a convincing 4-1 victor over Abdulla Al Rais of Omas and qualify from group B to the last 16 stage.
Kamali said: "I am glad to have qualified. In the first match, it was a mixture of bad luck and a lack of experience playing under pressure that resulted in the loss to Ahmed Saif.
"Ahmed Saif has been around for a long time and he carries a formidable reputation so when the score went 2-2, I cracked.
"And it wasn't also that as at the beginning of the match my cue had cracked as well. It was difficult for me to cue properly and I couldn't play my game.
"I used the same cue against Al Rais but this time I was relaxed in the knowledge that nobody would blame me for not making an effort."
Kamali's effort came after Shehab, the defending champion and top seed, delivered a break of 86 to rout Mubarak Khalid of Kuwait 4-0 and finished on top of the Group A standings.
Al Joker topped the Group D standings following a 4-0 hammering of Hani Kanan of Palestine. He is yet to drop a single frame in the tournament so far.
Iran's Hossein Vafaei, the world amateur snooker champion, topped the group E, but he laboured his way to a 4-3 win over Ali Abdul Mohsen of Iraq.
The 9-ball pool final will be played today.