Spanish Open SEA Watch: Amoyo's Run Ends on Day Two

The last thread connecting Southeast Asia to the Revora Spanish Open frayed on Friday night in Gandia. Denver Amoyo — playing under the Austrian flag but carrying a surname Filipino fans know well — won twice on the losers' side before Ukraine's Dmytro Skorokhodov ended his week in the evening wave.

Amoyo's busy Friday

Amoyo, the Austrian Pool Tour's No. 1 and the closest thing to a Southeast Asian interest left after Vietnam's Tran Xuan Duc bowed out on day one, finally got real table time on Friday after his opening loss and a walkover.

He made the most of it. At 16:00 local he beat Syria's Delmon Khwaja 9-2 in losers' round two — Khwaja having dropped his winners' match 9-2 to Poland's Daniel Macioł barely two hours earlier. Back at the table at 17:45, Amoyo produced another 9-2 scoreline, this time against Italy's Fabrizio Burato, to reach losers' round four.

The run stopped on table three at 19:30 — one of the Pro Billiard TV streamed tables — where Ukraine's Dmytro Skorokhodov proved too strong, 9-3. Amoyo's Gandia week ends before Saturday's last-32 bracket, but two wins on the day were the best return of any player with Southeast Asian ties in the field.

A second blank day for SEA flags

With Tran eliminated on Thursday and Amoyo out on Friday, the men's event has no Southeast Asian interest left at all. The women's draw that broke off on Friday — 52 players, with Germany's Pia Filler among the seeded entries — opened with not a single entrant from the region either.

For the Philippines, that makes it a genuinely quiet week: no Filipino entrant in Gandia, men's or women's, at the season's final Euro Tour stop.

The Manas connection keeps rolling

One familiar name did keep winning. Daniel Macioł — the Pole whom AJ Manas edged 11-10 in the Doha semifinal on Wednesday, days before Manas fell to Joshua Filler in the final — went unbeaten through Friday on the winners' side.

Macioł beat Khwaja 9-2, whitewashed the Netherlands' Sky van den Berg 9-0, then saw off Norway's Roger Lysholm 9-2 in the winners' qualification round to book a place in Saturday's last 32.

What remains at stake

Saturday brings the single-elimination phase: the last 32 from 12:00 local, now race-to-11, on the way to Sunday's 20:00 finals. With Gandia the last Predator Euro Tour stop of 2026, year-end ranking positions remain on the line — just no longer for anyone carrying a Southeast Asian flag.

File photo: Austria's Albin Ouschan — Denver Amoyo's teammate at Hit & Hope Billard Club Vienna — at the 2008 European Pool Championship in Willingen. Sebastian Voigt, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.