Hi all
This weekend saw the Top 16 of the 2010 ACTEBA Open Singles Championship go head to head for places in not only the 2010 ACT Open Team, but the Top 4 to decide the 2010 ACT Open Singles Champion next Saturday. The event was kindly hosted by The Maram and witnessed almost 500 frames of top quality Eight Ball.The qualifiers were led by the defending champion Matt Harmon and runner up Steve Thomas. Also backing up from last year’s field were 2008 champion Dean Welsh, Anthony Chia, Edmund Chen, Michael Hazilias and Semisi Naupoto, while Nicole Welsh got her first opportunity at the Top 16 after qualifying last year but missing the weekend while at the World Championships with the Australian Ladies Team.
Making a return to the 16 were Kenny Nicol, Mick Norton, Phillip Thorp and Tom Prpic, while the “young guns”, Alessandro Nasca and Brent Hampton joined the unranked Sterling Cross in their first hitout at the final stage.
With 60 frames each ahead of them, the players were aware that the weekend would more than likely be won by the strongest mentally, as the opposition was the toughest they had faced all tournament.
Round One kicked off with strong rounds of 10 from old hand Mick and the new boys Brent and Sterling, Sterling having completed more frames than any other player prior to this point of the tournament. But hot on their heels were the ever present Kenny and Hazza, as well as the returning Phil, all hitting rounds of 9.
After a slow first round, Matt hit his straps with a whopping 13 frames in Round Two to finish day one in equal second with Phil, who backed up with an 11. Sterling lead the field into the final day with another strong round of 11, but Hazza loomed just 2 frames behind while a big round of 11 from Dean took him to 5th and 10 from Edmund saw him 6th as the pack started to spread out after 30 frames.
As Saturday moved into Sunday, the field was spread by just 11 frames, with the split between 8th and last being just 4 frames as places in the top 9 were still wide open. After a slow Saturday (no doubt from lack of sleep), Anthony dominated Round 3 with 12 frames, while Matt and Hazza powered on with 10 each. A third round stutter from both Sterling and Phil dropped them right back into the chasing pack, but Edmund and Dean continued to recover from poor first rounds to lead said pack.
With Matt and Hazza enjoying a comfortable lead, pressure was mounting around the middle of the group and those all important 7, 8 and 9 spots. But despite taking frames off a few of the leaders, Tom was unfortunately never in the hunt after finishing Saturday at 10 and 20, and cruised to the end to finish in 16th place on 19 frames. Nicole was suffering a similar fate, with the boys not being very nice to her, but James hit his strongest round in the 4th to hit 7 frames and finish equal 14th with Nicole on 21. The subsequent playoff saw Nicole triumph 2-0 to finish 14th in the order of merit and a strong showing for the first lady in the Top 16 for many years.
After a massive first round, Brent had dropped 9 straight in Round Two to fall off the pace, and could never recover despite being only a couple of frames out of the mix for the remainder. Finishing on 25 frames and unlucky 13th, he showed enough in his first tilt at the top flight to convince everyone he’d be back. 12th place fell to last year’s runner up, Steve, who wasn’t able to match his Top 16 debut despite some good play in the third round, finishing with 26 frames but yet not that far off the pace for 9th. That battle was heating up…
Matt hit a consistent 9 frames to clear the group with 39 and first place, reaching the Top 4 for an incredible 13th time. Hazza had a small hiccup with 7 in his last, allowing the pack to get within reach, but had done enough for 36 frames and 2nd place to reach his 2nd Top 4. It wasn’t long before he realised how crucial those last few frames were, though.
Edmund finished his round early and sat neatly in 2nd place on 34 frames, though Hazza caught and passed him and 3 other players also had enough frames up their sleeve to catch him. Alessandro threatened all Sunday with 17 from 30 but couldn’t quite bridge the gap and finished just 2 frames off the pace in 11th, while Kenny thought his 30 were not enough despite hitting 50% as Mick still had a number of frames in hand.
Dean suffered a horror start to round 4 but recovered well, as his 5 late frames (including one against his sister, the meany) combined with the first 3 rounds were enough to get him through on 31. Mick then came home strongly to overtake both Dean and Kenny and finish 8th for yet another state team berth, while Dean and Kenny finished 9th and 10th respectively. This gave Dean yet another state berth and left Kenny awaiting a withdrawal to gain his return to Nationals after sitting out the trials last year.
Meanwhile, with the team decided, we still had 5 players fighting it out for the last spot in Top 4. As the author sat there and worked it out, amazingly all 5 lost their next two frames. Anthony continued his renaissance with 10 frames to finish Sunday on 22/8 and a remarkable comeback after sitting equal 10th at the turn. This put him one up on Edmund and as the maths were calculated left him in an unchallenged 3rd place.
As Edmund watched on, Phil and Sterling still had the frames in hand to top him, but from out of nowhere Misi destroyed the field for 13 frames in the last round, losing only to the top 2 finishers in Matt and Hazza. This landed him 34 frames and equal 4th and suddenly that magical word, “PLAYOFF”, was starting to hit everyone’s mouths. Sterling stumbled home with 7 frames, 13 for the day disappointing for him after leading the field into the turn, but a missed frame or two in closing stages left him, you guessed it, on 34 frames and joining Misi and Edmund. All that was left was the other early leader, Phil, to win his last frame and all hell breaks loose in a playoff.
After such a strong Saturday, Phil wasn’t about to let a 5 frame 3rd round keep him back and nailed his last frame for 9 in round 4 and, yep, 34 overall to finish equal 4th and force a four way playoff for the last spot in the Top 4. All 4 players must have been ruing that one shot that rattled out or the leave that didn’t quite work as they looked at Hazza and Anthony, only 2 and 1 frames up on them, sitting back already thinking about their chances next Saturday. But Matt had 5 on them, so they couldn’t really blame him…
Readers of my emails / website entries would be aware that I love playoffs. Not only for the drama it creates, but it also means that as an adjudicator it means I get to stay for another beer! Unfortunately I was driving today, but as Edmund, Phil, Misi and Sterling kicked off, I was reminded of two weeks ago when JR, Mick Norton and Michael Masal fought a three way playoff with basically a who’s who of ACT Eight Ball there at the Basement to watch as the Labor Club group and a few of the day before’s players coming down to see the end. I think we had 12 of the Top 16 in the room for that one.
Anyway, Misi kicked off with a 2-1 win over Edmund to take charge but knowing the 1 loss could hurt. This was eased somewhat by Phil only gaining a 2-1 win over Sterling as well.
You could barely blink before Sterling had recovered from his early setback to take out Misi 2-0 and Phil made it back to back with a 2-0 win over Edmund. This left Phil in the driver’s seat with Misi to play, but Sterling was in with a chance if he could get a result against Edmund.
Misi took the first one against Phil, giving Sterling the chance he was looking for. But while Edmund never gave up, it seemed that Sterling plays better after 60 frames warm up to blitz the rubber 2-0. So now a victory to Phil would decide it easily, but with Sterling having 2 wins and a frame count of 5/2, the fact that Misi dropped one to Edmund and lost 2-0 to Sterling meant that only two straight frames to Phil would knock Sterling out.
Despite knowing his frame count had eliminated him, Misi was still playing hard but Phil kept me with something to write about by grabbing the second frame and tying the rubber at 1-all. True to form, the last frame was a nail biter as Phil grabbed the early advantage only to slip up and leave Misi a hundred ways to snooker him (only about 5 of those 100 which I could pull off, but I’m not Misi). As they jockeyed for white ball position, it was eventually left for Phil for a difficult runout and next thing you knew Misi had finished to send Sterling into the Top 4, tied on 2 wins with Phil and Misi, but with a 5/2 frame count against Phil’s 5/3 and Misi’s 4/4.
So drama till the end again. Last year saw Hazza and Anthony play off for the last place in the team (and then incredibly smash it home for a Top 4 spot this year), while the year before that saw Dean and Anthony playoff for 4th spot (which Dean won and subsequently took out the title). But probably nothing compared to the 4 way playoff for the last two spots in the State Team that same year which involved two Australian Teams reps and one Australian Singles Rep plus a returning multiple ACT rep. OK so maybe that one beats the Basement group…
Congratulations to Matt Harmon, Michael Hazilias, Anthony Chia and Sterling Cross on qualifying not only for the 2010 ACT Open Team, but also making the grade for next Saturday’s Top 4 Playoff for the 2010 ACT Open Singles Title at the Labor Club in Belconnen. Tables will be open from 10.30am for practice with play to start at 11am. While I’m at it, the Top 4 will consist of a round robin of race to 5 followed by a final of race to 9 for the State Title. I can’t wait to see one of the strongest Top 4’s in recent years belt into each other.
Further congratulations must go to Phil Thorp, Edmund Chen, Semisi Naupoto, Mick Norton and Dean Welsh for earning their invitations to represent the ACT at this year’s Nationals in Adelaide.
While many might think commiserations are in order for the rest, I think that congratulations must be extended to the seven players who lucked out this weekend. The vast majority of us couldn’t contemplate the level of play required to even reach this stage, so congratulations on reaching the Top 16 in the ACT to Alessandro Nasca, Brent Hampton, James Southwell, Kenny Nicol, Nicole Welsh, Stephen Thomas and Tom Prpic.
Thank you as always to The Maram for hosting our State Trials. Your generosity, along with our other supporting venues, is greatly appreciated by ACTEBA and we look forward to a successful remainder of our trials season.
A quick kudos to Matt Harmon for the hardware and Danny Marlow for the software to provide us with our leaderboard this weekend. It certainly assists both the spectators and adjudicators and hopefully we can continue to move ACTEBA into the computer age…
But the four people I can’t thank enough are Scrol, Cath Rollinson, Trent Billington and Penny Foudoulis. I know many of you out there have had a turn at adjudicating but to coordinate 16 players on 8 tables with results coming at you every 5 seconds plus having to put up frames and keep the computerised leaderboard up to date and players noticing discrepancies and me coming up saying “how’s it going?” and yeah, you get the picture. Scrol, Cath, Trent and Penny, your efforts this weekend are very much appreciated by myself and I have no doubt they were appreciated by the 16 players.
Finally, I look forward to a huge Top 4 next weekend (after a massive win by the Southern Guns on Wednesday night). Hazza has held the number 1 ranking for 12 months, Anthony is always there or thereabouts, Sterling is the Cane Toad wildcard and Matt is, well, Matt.
OK I’m gonna throw this in there only because I have already written an essay. My beautiful wife gave birth to a gorgeous daughter on Thursday afternoon. We named her Gracie and after seeing how keen her big sister was for pool tables this morning I reckon we have a ladies doubles combination that will break any records Cindy and Nicole are gonna set…
Again, well played to all players this weekend and good luck to Matt, Hazza, Anthony and Sterling next Saturday.
Below is a round by round summary of the weekend, with further stats pages to be added to website in the next day or so.
http://www.acteba.com.au/downloads/2010_Open_Singles_Top_16_Results.pdf
Regards
Chris Jones
ACTEBA Tournament Director
0403 545 619
