Therese Klompenhouwer — Women's Three-Cushion Queen

Therese Klompenhouwer (born 3 January 1983, Netherlands) is a Dutch professional three-cushion player and the most successful woman in the history of the sport — the undisputed ‘Queen of three-cushion’.

Born in Nijkerk and coached for many years by Christ van der Smissen, Klompenhouwer took up the cue early but only switched from the free game (vrije partij) to three-cushion billiards at nineteen. That late move into the hardest carom discipline turned out to be the making of a champion: the touch she had built in free game became the foundation of a player who reads the table through system rather than through nerve.

Career highlights

• UMB Women’s World Three-Cushion Champion six times — 2014 (Sinop), 2016 (Guri), 2018 (İzmir), 2019 (Valencia), 2022 (Heerhugowaard) and 2025 (Cartagena) — the joint-most in history
• CEB European Ladies Three-Cushion Champion a record thirteen times
• 17-time Dutch National Three-Cushion Champion
• World Games three-cushion gold medallist, winning the final at the 2025 Chengdu World Games
• 2013 Verhoeven Open (New York): won the ladies event, beating four-time world champion Orie Hida 25–16 in 17 innings in the final; her 2.500 best-game average (25 in 10 innings) ranks among the highest in women’s three-cushion
• Competes regularly in open events against the world’s top male professionals — and beats them

Playing style & technique

Klompenhouwer is precise, calm and deeply positional — a player who wins on geometry rather than on adrenaline. Where many three-cushion specialists power the cue ball, she prizes control: a measured stroke, clean contact and just enough running or reverse english to land the next ball softly. Having carried an exceptional feel for the cue ball over from free game, she now layers that touch on top of hard counting, so that intuition and arithmetic agree before she shoots.

She leans heavily on the diamond system for long, table-length routes, treating the rail numbers as a safety net under her feel rather than a replacement for it. To see how those numbers translate into reliable angles, our glossary and technique hub break down the same running-english and tempo choices she makes shot to shot.

Signature shots & systems

Her trademark is the long, patient route played by the diamonds — the kind of around-the-table pattern where the cue ball travels three or four rails and still arrives with position for the next point. She builds each carom so the following ball is already half-played, the hallmark of a true positional player.

• System-based route calculation: long around-the-table shots played by the diamonds, not by feel alone
• Reference-system control on full table-length lines — the bread-and-butter of the system shot she trusts most
• Positional play that leaves the next shot easy rather than forcing the spectacular one
• Unshakeable composure: the same unhurried tempo whether she leads or trails

If you want to study a long, calculated line in the same family she relies on, the diagonal and around-the-table positions are the natural place to start, with the diamond-counting logic spelled out in our five-and-a-half system guide.

Rivalries, era & influence

Klompenhouwer rose in the era of the great male champions — the relentless run-makers like Torbjörn Blomdahl, the systematic precision of Dick Jaspers and the measured patience of Dani Sánchez — and she chose to test herself against exactly that company. By entering open World Cups and invitationals rather than only women’s events, she turned every result into an argument that three-cushion rewards system and control, not strength. Within the women’s game she has been the standard everyone else measures against for more than a decade, her Dutch and European dominance leaving little room for anyone to settle.

Legacy

Klompenhouwer did more than collect titles — she opened the discipline for women worldwide, proving on equal terms against the best men that three-cushion is a game of system and not of strength. Her sponsorships, her visibility and her sheer longevity have widened the audience for the women’s game far beyond the Netherlands. In an era crowded with all-time-great champions, she made ‘the best woman in the world’ an inadequate description and simply became one of the finest three-cushion players in the world. New players can follow her example with a cue, a table and the right reading of the rules and the diamonds.