Thousands who stayed until well past midnight Sunday were rewarded with a sparkling display of pool wizardry by Pagulayan who combined skill with a heavy dose of fighting spirit to turn back rising Taiwanese star PeiWei Chang, 17-13, in a gripping finale.
When Pagulayan holed the last nine ball on the 30th rack, the pint-sized cue artist who lives in Toronto with his mother and five siblings, exploded into a ball of energy. He jumped along the rails that guarded the playing room, slapped fives with spectators, almost embraced the pretty referee and pumped his fist repeatedly while screaming, "Heart, heart, heart."
Indeed, it was all about heart. And more.
Gloom had descended on the playing hall where hundreds of Filipinos were huddled as Chang posted six-rack leads several times, the last at 10-4. Chang was cool and calculated, showing no emotion, like a hired killer whose victim laid at his feet. He moved ahead, 11-6.
But the final was a race to 17 not 11, unlike the quarterfinals and the semifinals. And as Chang stood to put the finishing touches to his own glorious climb to the finals, he committed a mistake.
That was enough for Pagulayan to return to the table and and into the game.
The win earned Pagulayan $75,000, the biggest paycheck of his pro career, while Chang, a virtual unknown in the business before the tournament, settled for $35,000.
In the wild and ecstatic moments of the triumph, Pagulayan did not forget his roots.
"To my friends in the Philippines, don’t worry I’m still a Filipino," he shouted.
Pagulayan’s title-run was by no means easy.
He barely qualified in the knockout phase after finishing the prelims with a 4-3 record, a far-cry from his 7-0 mark last year when he went all the way to the finals before losing to German Thorsten Hohmann.
Pagulayan narrowly beat Andreja Klasovic, 9-8, in the Round of 64 before taking the measure of Martin Kempter, 9-5, ChienChe Huang, 11-7, FongPang Chao, 11-10 and PoCheng Kuo, 11-4 in the succeeding rounds. Chang was Pagulayan’s fourth straight Taiwanese opponent in the knockout round, underscoring the host nation’s dominance in the tournament.
The 26-year-old Pagulayan also faced an uphill climb in the title match. After gifting the first frame to Pagulayan by missing an angular shot on the brown seven, Chang took eight of the next nine to build a six-rack lead, 8-2.
Chang miscalculated on a four-eight combo in the 15th frame while leading 10-4, which Pagula-yan translated into two wins to come within four.
The turning point of the match came in the 18th rack when Chang, up 11-6, bungled an easy shot on the 2-ball leading to five straight run outs by Pagulayan for an 11-all deadlock.
"When he missed that shot (on the 2-ball), I was thinking, ‘Punish him, punish him,’" Pagulayan recalled during the post-championship press conference.
Chang, though, seized control again after Pagulayan misfired on the 2ball in the 23rd rack.
But that was the last of Chang’s shining moments as Pagulayan won the next six frames for the title.
Pagulayan, the coun-try’s 13th warrior in the field, more than made up for the failed campaign of the "Dirty Dozen."
The official Filipino entries in the 128-man draw fell one after the other starting with the prelims misadventure of Jose "Amang" Parica, who had more rack wins than some of the qualifiers in Group 16 but couldn’t make the cut with only three wins to show.
Seeded Filipinos Lee Van Corteza and Warren Kiamco joined Parica at the sidelines after losing in the first round of the knockout phase along with qualifiers Antonio Gabica, Gandy Valle and Antonio "Nickoy" Lining.
