Felix Vogel dropped the second set, regrouped, and closed it out anyway. The 18-year-old German won the Billard Beckmann Men's Open at the Predator Pro Billiard Series in St. Johann im Pongau on Tuesday, defeating Wu Kun Lin of Chinese Taipei 4-2, 2-4, 4-2 in the final to take his first major PBS title. Going down a set to a player who posted a Player Overall Performance score of 864 in the semis, then winning the third cleanly, is a different kind of result than just running someone out.

Vogel is the reigning WPA World Junior Champion and a top-ten ranked player on the Predator Euro Tour. His path through the 96-player, $125,000 field was not smooth. His semifinal over Bulgaria's Georgi Georgiev went three sets after Vogel built a 3-0 lead in the second and had to fight back from level to close the decider 4-1. Earlier in the week, Predator posted a clip of him forcing three consecutive fouls against Jayson Shaw under the caption "Three fouls. No mercy", a sequence of defensive play that split the comments between people who called it disciplined tactics and people who found it tedious, which is about the best reaction that kind of clip can produce. Wu Kun Lin had his own strong week, knocking out Oliver Szolnoki in two sets in the semis before the final.

Seo Seoa won the Carrinho Women's Open, her second PBS European title in eight months. She won in Spain last December, and on Tuesday she beat Austria's Jasmin Ouschan in the final in front of a crowd that had every reason to pull for the home player. Ouschan's run to the final included a 3 hour 12 minute quarterfinal against Japan's Chihiro Kawahara and a semifinal win over Taiwan's Wei Tzu-Chien. Seoa steadied through a three-set semifinal over Muyan Zhang before closing the final out. The Carrinho Women's Open ran June 17-23 with a prize fund of $90,000.

Han Yu and Wu Kun Lin took the Predator Mixed Doubles Open, winning the $100,000 event over Dennis Grabe and Fu Xiaofang in the final. The Chinese-Taipei pairing looked in control all week. In the semis they got past the Japanese duo of Chihiro Kawahara and Naoyuki Oi, taking a well-contested first set 4-3 before closing the second 4-2. Grabe and Fu reached the final the hard way, edging Wang Wan Lin and David Alcaide 4-3, 4-3 in a match that could have gone either way. Their path also included a quarterfinal against Wojciech Szewczyk and Yuki Hiraguchi that nearly went to a shootout. At 3-2 in sets, with the match heading for a spot-shot decider, Hiraguchi missed a straight 8-ball with only the 10 remaining and handed Grabe and Fu the win

The Kawahara and Oi semifinal run was its own small story. Their quarterfinal win over Kristina Tkach and Eklent Kaci came right after Kawahara had finished a three-hour-plus match elsewhere in the venue, with only 15 minutes between the two. The mixed doubles wrapped Monday June 22. All three events ran at the Hotel Alpina Alpendorf in St. Johann im Pongau, Austria.

🔗 Full PBS recap.

Beijing is writing checks the rest of the sport can't match. The Duya Legends Tour Golden Nine Global Finals are running now in Beijing, and the winner of this event takes home a first prize ¥10 million (~$1.5M USD). The Duya circuit runs on Golden Nine, a Chinese variant of 9-ball played on Chinese-style tables with a points-based scoring format: a break-and-run earns 10 points, a win earns 4, an opponent foul earns 1. It is not standard WNT pool. The international field competing this week does not appear to care. Mickey Krause, the European Open champion and Mosconi Cup veteran, is in the field and called it the biggest pool tournament in the world, noting 600-plus players from 60-plus countries entered the bracket. Gareth Potts is competing. So are Dennis Orcollo and Johann Chua. The event is WPA-ratified and running at Blue Gem Arena in Beijing's Changping district under the title "2nd Duya Legends Golden Nine International Tour Global Finals." The final 8 is locked in as of this writing, catch the rest on their YT page.

The WNT switched balls. Matchroom Pool and Dynaspheres announced a multi-year partnership making the Dynaspheres Titan Series the official ball set of the World Nineball Tour, with the debut at the UK Open in late May. The Titan Series keeps the yellow-and-black nine-ball color scheme but redesigns the full set, including a new cue ball that landed with mixed reception on AZB forums. The loudest complaint came from players who bought Aramith Black sets specifically to practice on tour-spec equipment and are now on a different ball again. For customers asking what the pros are playing on, the answer just changed.

The World Pool Masters is going to Taiwan. Matchroom and Fullcan Sports announced June 1 that the World Pool Masters will return in January 2027 as part of a nine-day double-header with the Fullcan Sports Chinese Taipei Open, both events at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei City. The World Pool Masters runs January 12-14 with a two-table arena setup for the first time in the event's history. The Chinese Taipei Open runs January 6-10 and becomes a co-promoted WNT ranking event for the first time. The 2027 World Pool Masters carries a $125,000 prize fund.

🔗 Duya Legend’s Tour 🔗 Dynasphere and WNT 🔗 World Pool Masters

The full Shaw vs. Vogel match from the loser-qualifier round is up free on the Pro Billiard TV YouTube channel. Predator posted the Vogel three-foul sequence from this match against Jayson Shaw under the caption "Three fouls. No mercy." It runs about two minutes. Vogel plays defense. Shaw fouls. Vogel plays more defense. Shaw fouls again. One more time. The pool internet had opinions. Watch it here:

The US Open is 63 days out and it is coming to Texas for the first time in the tournament's 49-year history. Embassy Suites in Frisco, August 25-30, $500,000 on the line, 256 players. Former US Open champion Jeremy Jones, a Texas native, said when the Frisco announcement came out in February that it was a big moment for the state. He was right. A central US location puts the event within driving range of a much larger chunk of the country's pool community than its previous homes did, and for a tournament with a field this deep, that matters.

After this week in Austria, Vogel is a name to watch in that bracket. He is 18 years old, he just took a PBS Men's Open in a three-set final after dropping the second set, and he plays the kind of patient, tactical game that travels well to a long-format major. Fedor Gorst, who won the US Open two years ago, is the world number one and has something to prove after a rough UK Open exit. Aloysius Yapp is the defending champion. The field does not get thinner than this.

🔗 WNT’s US Open Nears

Universal Open — Mille Billiards, Jakarta, Indonesia | June 25-28 | $63,000 WNT Ranking. Several Austria players are heading straight there. Watch the draw.

Mezz Bucharest Open — IDM Club, Bucharest, Romania | July 3-5 | $39,000 WNT Ranking

2AM Prague Open — 2AM Billiards, Prague, Czech Republic | July 8-11 | $35,000 WNT Ranking

McDermott Open — Yale Billiards, Wallingford, CT | July 16-19 | $29,300 WNT Ranking

Vice City Classic — Classic Billiards, Florida | July 29-August 2 | $71,200 WNT Ranking

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