News France Sweep Four Team Titles to Close the Blackball Worlds — Filler and Szewczyk Fight for a Doha Final Spot as Hawkins Pulls Out of Nanjing

The Blackball World Championships at Heathrow finished last night with France winning almost everything again. Les Bleus took four of the team titles on the final day and lost only one match all day. Out in Doha the 10-ball reaches its last day this morning: Joshua Filler and Wojciech Szewczyk play the first semi-final, Daniel Macioł and Albert James Manas play the other, and the final follows this afternoon. Snooker is quiet until the weekend, but the Nanjing draw has already lost Barry Hawkins.

Blackball Worlds: France win four team golds on finals day
The French Billiards Federation's teams won the Ladies, Seniors (+40), Masters (+50) and Under-23 team titles on Wednesday, the last day of the WPA championships at the Thistle Heathrow. According to the French federation's broadcaster LSEI, they won 10 of their 11 ties on the day.

• Ladies: France beat England A 13–2 in the semi-final, then South Africa 13–3 in the final. Marion Jude, Collette Henriksen, Sabrilla Brunet, Ophélie Laval, Émilie Carneiro and Floriane Niollet went through the whole event unbeaten (10 from 10). That adds a team gold to Jude's singles crown.
• Seniors (+40): France beat Australia 13–5, then South Africa 13–8 in the final, also finishing unbeaten.
• Masters (+50): the closest of the lot. France scraped past Australia 13–12 in the semi-final, then beat England 13–11 for gold.
• Under-23: France beat England 8–4, then South Africa 8–3. Théo Schneider and Thibault Couzigou, the U23 doubles champions, finish with another gold alongside Léonardo Moreira and Damien Joly.
• Under-18: South Africa beat France 8–7 in the final, the only French defeat of the day.
• Grandmasters (+60): France took bronze by beating Australia 13–9 in the third-place match.

LSEI puts France's total for the championships at 11 world titles and 28 medals. The French men's team was not involved on the last day after losing 13–11 to Wales in the quarter-finals. We have not yet seen a confirmed result for the Men's A final; Malta and England A met in one semi-final. We will report it once official results are published.

Doha 10-ball: semi-finals this morning, final this afternoon
After nine days of play, four players are left at the Qatar 10-Ball World Cup. Both semi-finals are races to 11 and are scheduled for 09:00 GMT. The final is a race to 13 at 17:00 Doha time, which is 14:00 GMT.

• Wojciech Szewczyk v Joshua Filler. Szewczyk beat John Morra 11–8 in the quarter-finals, having already knocked out the defending champion Jonas Magpantay. Filler beat Miguel Salvilla 11–7. Their records this week are very different: Filler lost on day one and came through the one-loss side, while Szewczyk has looked dangerous from the start.
• Daniel Macioł v Albert James Manas. Macioł beat his Polish team-mate Konrad Juszczyszyn 11–6. Manas beat Hsieh Chia Chen 11–8 and is the last Filipino left, from a nation that had seven players in the last 16.

Two Poles in the last four means an all-Polish final is possible. Mubarak Al-Khayarin, executive director of the Qatar Billiard Sports Federation, told Qatari newspaper Al Sharq he expects the semi-finals and the final to be full of excitement and very close. The trophy presentation follows immediately after the final.

Snooker: Hawkins out of Nanjing before a ball is struck
The International Championship in Nanjing does not start until Saturday, but the draw already shows one withdrawal. Barry Hawkins is listed as having pulled out because of illness, which gives Ricky Walden a walkover into the last 32. Wu Yize defends the title, and this is the last ranking event that can change the seedings for the UK Championship in York. The event runs from 31 October to 7 November. The final is the best of 19 frames and the winner gets £175,000.

• Saturday's early session (01:30 GMT) includes Jimmy White v Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy v Mitchell Mann and Zhou Yuelong v Liam Davies.
• Saturday 06:00 GMT: Neil Robertson v Jiang Jun, Ryan Day v Lei Peifan, Stuart Carrington v Hossein Vafaei.
• Sunday has Ding Junhui's home campaign, John Higgins against Lyu Haotian and Kyren Wilson against Liam Highfield.

Where to watch / what's on today (all times GMT)

• 09:00: Doha 10-ball semi-finals, Szewczyk v Filler and Macioł v Manas (races to 11). Scores on the Qatar Billiard Sports Federation live scoring.
• 14:00: Doha 10-ball final (race to 13), followed by the presentation.
• Blackball: the Heathrow championships are over and teams leave today. Full team results are on the BPF League App, and singles and doubles draws are on CueScore.
• Coming up: the Nanjing International Championship starts Saturday at 01:30 GMT, live on TNT Sports and HBO Max in the UK.

Sources: LSEI, Times of Malta, Qatar Billiard Sports Federation live scoring, Al Sharq and the Saudi Press Agency, published snooker draw listings, SnookerHQ.

Feature image: “Blackball 01” by 0x010C, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.