Four Filipinos fought back from early setbacks to keep their title bids alive in the 2026 WPA World 8-Ball Championship in St. Louis, Missouri over the weekend.

Veteran campaigner Jeff De Luna, the 2006 Doha Asian Games 9-ball silver medalist, stayed in contention with a dominant 8-0 shutout of Great Britain’s Darren Appleton in the loser’s qualification to make up for his narrow 7-8 loss to American Billy Thorpe in the second round.

Also advancing were Sean Mark Malayan, who turned back Estonia’s Karl Gnaderberg, 8-5; Lee Van Corteza, who edged Guatemala’s Luis Lemus, 8-5; and Roberto Gomez, who won by default over South Africa’s Aden Joseph.

Corteza and Gomez won their respective first-round matches over Germany’s Mortiz Heuhausen (8-6) and Albania’s Kledo Kaci (8-5), but lost to Greece’s Dimitris Loukatos (6-8) and Fedor Gorst (4-8) in their next match.

Malayan, for his part, fumbled his first match against American Skyler Woodward (2-8).

With their recent victories, they set up crucial second-round qualification matches, with De Luna tackling Australian Sullivan Clark, Malayan facing German Joshua Filler, Gomez battling Polish Radoslaw Babica, and Corteza meeting Finnish Arseni Sevastyanov.

Earlier, Carlo Biado made his presence felt after an opening-round bye, dispatching Lithuania’s Pijus Labutis, 8-3, to kick off his campaign in style.

Another win by the world 9-ball and 10-ball champion against Woodward -- whose match was ongoing at press time -- would seal Biado’s spot in the Round of 32 knockout stage.

So far, Joven Bustamante remains the lone Filipino casualty in this 96-player, $300,000 tournament after yielding to Hong Kong’s Robbie Capito, 6-8, and Germany’s Ralf Souquet, 4-8, in the double-elimination preliminaries.