Switzerland is a BEAUTIFUL country. I love traveling to just about anywhere in Europe because there is such a great level of diversity from one country to another and the mix of cultures is incredible. One of my best friend's (Kirstie, who is not a pool player nor does she enjoy anything about pool) decided to join me on my trip to visit Marco. Marco Tschudi is one of the top ranked Swiss pro's and our trip happened to fall on the same week as the Swiss Open, which Marco was already committed to playing. So Kirstie was obligated to enduring a pool tournament after all :)
We flew into Zurich and spent a few days doing the typical touristy things. We attended a festival that had great food and attractions, explored the city and visited Marco's family. Being the American tourists that we are, we of course had to hit up one of the Swiss Chocolate factories.
The Swiss Open took place in a pretty little mountain town called Gstaad that was located in the Swiss Alps. Although we had just a 2 hour drive from Zurich, we decided to stop in another cute town on the way called Berne. Then we were off to Gstaad to check out the venue at the players meeting.
Gstaad was a small little town, everything was walkable distance and the weather was beautiful during our visit. We checked out the town square and some of the ski lifts nearby but most of our time was, of course, spent on the tournament. Driving into the town Marco had no directions written down as to where this venue was supposed to be so we were at first aprehensive about where to go. But we quickyl saw that there were signs everywhere pointing to the tournament location...and to the BAR at the tournament venue :)
Tournaments in Europe have such a different feel from the events in the U.S. The few that I have gone to are all about the experience. The location of these tournaments have been amazing. One was on the tiny island of Malta off the coast of Italy, another was in a sea side tourist town in Spain
and this one was a popular vacation/ski destination in the alps. Every person I met in Gstaad was very friendly (well all except the french bartender, she was alittle impatient with our lack of German understanding) and the promoters were great. Our hotel was just a few blocks away and the town had signs directing you to everything we might need to go to.
The venue had a great set-up but I have to say this location was a bit too far from a major city to really attract any fans. Even at the finals (which were televised on Swiss TV) the room only had tournament players and their travel companions in attendance. I don't know if this had to do with the rural nature of the location or the lack of effective advertising on the part of the promoters. Either way, it was run very professionally with an interesting format. Players were organized into groups of 16 player double elimination brackets. The final 4 of each bracket would move on to the final bracket. On day two, players had a chance to buy back into other 16 player brackets and get a second shot at qualifying for that final bracket. My only complaint about that format is that I am not confident that the final bracket was seeded in any particular manner so some of the top players in attendance met in very early rounds. Neils Feijen was eliminated early as well as Ralph Souquet. 
Europe always throws me off of my usually daily schedule and the staples of my diet are never available :) I have come to rely on the healthy fruit and oatmeal snacks at Starbucks when I'm on the road but the tiny shots of coffee in Euopre just don't measure up. 
I didn't play very well but Marco did great and ended up in 3rd place, knocking out players like Ralph and Roman Hybler along the way. He ultimately ran out of steam as he was running on zero food and about 10 red bulls all day...haha. Since Kirstie has a zero tolernace for pool, we spent most of the tournament time in the bar area of the venue where we met all the fun guys from the Gstaad Billiard Club who were running the bar.
The Swiss Open was a fun event but I have to say that the caliber of the tournament was better with the last Predator event I attended so I hope they continue to hold some stops internationally. Thank you to the tournament promoters for putting together a great event and for their hospitality to us as visiting players. I hope to retun to the event if they hold it again next year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment