Sang Lee vs Raymond Ceulemans: 1998 Carom Corner Tour - RR Match 15

You may wish to skip the introductions and jump to the match. However, make sure listen to the situation briefing in order to understand the gravity of the match.

This long-lost footage is part of a series of videos captured in 1998 but was never released due to technical problems that CaromTV had with some of its switching equipment. I am making these available for the die-hard enthusiasts because contained in them are some absolutely stellar performances and nail-biters during Sang Lee's rise to the top of one of the strongest international fields ever assembled on US soil at the time. The super-star field included: Sang Lee, Dick Jaspers, Raymond Ceulemans, Semih Sayginer, Frederic Caudron, Eddy Leppins, Francis Forton, Mazin Shooni, Bill Smith, and many other champions.

This is a round-robin match to 50 points between Raymond Ceulemans and Sang Lee during the 1998 $150,000 Carom Corner Tour stop at Chris' Billiards in Chicago.

Introductions: 13:30
Ceulemans special welcome: 13:50
Situation Briefing: 14:40

This match is a do-or-die fight. If Ceulemans wins, he would be the outright champion of the event. If Sang Lee wins, he would create a 3-way tie with Ceulemans and Jaspers and force a final playoff between him and Jaspers (iff his average was higher than Ceulemans after this match).

The amazing thing about this particular victory was that not only did Sang Lee need to win, but he had keep Ceulemans overall tournament average below his in order to be able to make the playoff with Jaspers. To make things worse for Sang, the great Ceulemans jumps ahead to a seemingly unsurmountable 29-13 lead. Sang Lee then digs down deep and zones in - including a key run of 11 (at 1:12:00) that gives him the lead as he completely turns the table around on the legend.

The footage was captured by Ira Lee and Jan Carl of CaromTV.com but, once again, never officially released due to severe degradation of video quality during the camera switches.

Bill Smith and Ira Lee offer commentary on this historic match.


Experience Sang Lee's explosive road to the Final Match with this rare series:

1) Earlier round-robin encounter with Dick Jaspers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azoc9dZKZ40

2) Down to the wire with Semih Sayginer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22s7gvrRaWQ

3) Decisive win over Mazin Shooni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2ja8_ZzN0

4) Amazing comeback against Raymond Ceulemans http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPoGZrSso3o

5) Final playoff match.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0-B5pkEBA

Also filmed at this event: Raymond Ceulemans vs Bill Smith http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z1YdTQ4lLY

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Raymond Ceulemans
• Sang Lee
• Carom Corner
• 3-cushion
• billiards
• carom
• pool
• Bill Smith

[tiger37373]

Ira,

Thanks for uploading another great match! So much tension!

[iralee3c]

@tiger37373 You're welcome. I've got a lot of archived VHS tapes and I'm converting them all. Stay tuned...

[skook1002]

great match!

[bagjunggyu]

This is so comfortable match video and i'm missing him still now.thank you for sharing this rare video Ira 

[carloscastillon72]

two great Carom Masters facing together... thanks a lot for sharing Ira!

[SOLOPEREZA]

thanks from Colombia for the match, Sang Lee is the best player of everytime to me, greetings Ira.

[BartjeOstend]

skip to 15:50 for the match

[BartjeOstend]

when I go to poolplaces and people knows that I m from Belgium they automaticly start to talk about R. Ceulemans , that will be the first full match that I see :) Thanks for upload.