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​​NÜSSLE IS AWESOME IN AUSTRIA AGAIN 
 
For the third consecutive year promising teenager Florian Nüssle has become the Austrian National Snooker Champion. 
 
Held at the BLZ Vienna, this 24-player event was the concluding chapter to the 2018 domestic campaign. 
 
Automatically seeded into the last 16, Nüssle destroyed his opposition as he advanced to the final without dropping a single frame.

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The 17-year-old defending champion defeated Bernhard Wallner, Jérôme Liedtke and then Mario Bodlas, each by 4-0 scorelines. During the last frame of his quarter-final success against Liedtke he compiled a break of 111 - this would be the highest across the weekend.
 
Nüssle was surely braced for a far sterner examination in the final as he faced former three-time champion Andreas Ploner. It would be a repeat of the previous year's title decider. 
 
Ploner, who reached the last 16 of a Q-School event in 2018, waived just one frame in three matches as he progressed through the field.
 
The best-of-nine frames final saw Nüssle take an early 2-0 lead, but breaks of 48, 74 and 50 helped Ploner draw level at the mid-session interval. 
 
Efforts of 40 and 62 aided Nüssle's response as he re-established a two frame cushion to move one away, although Ploner returned again (47 break, frame 7) to force a decider. 
 
However, Nüssle resisted his opponent once more, claiming the ninth frame 74-0 to retain the title and secure a trio of career wins in Austrian snooker's most prestigious tournament.  
 
The following weekend at the Köö 7 Snooker Club, also in the capital city, Stephanie Doležal won her second Austrian National Women's Snooker Championship - ten years on from her first.

Both events were run by the ÖSBV, the Austrian Snooker & Billiards Federation.

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​2018 Austrian National Snooker Championship 
Results (from the quarter-finals onwards) 
Oskar Charlesworth 0-4 Mario Bodlos 
Jérôme Liedtke 0-4 Florian Nüssle 
Andreas Ploner 4-0 Emanuel Stegmeier 
Manuel Pomwenger 4-3 Philipp Koch 
 

Semi-Finals 
Bodlos 0-4 Nüssle 
Ploner 4-1 Pomwenger 
 
Final 
Nüssle 5-4 Ploner

The picture above is courtesy of Claudia Nüssle.

Article written and published by Michael Day on the 28th January 2019