Mario He
The final curtain came down on the 2024 International Open at the Renaissance World Golf Village Resort in St. Augustine, FL last night (Tues., Nov 26), when the defending champion of the International Straight Pool Open, Austria’s Mario He, completed a modest, 19-ball run to defeat his fellow countryman, Max Lechner, 150-131, to claim that title for the second straight year (one of three competitors who did that in the Open events this year). It will not have escaped those who are good at quick math to figure out that He’s final run began when the match was tied at Lechner’s final score.
In many ways, a straight pool match (to any number, but let’s say 150) is not always a single match, but a series of them; sometimes short, sometimes long and often separated by where a given long run of balls begins and ends (Lee Vann Corteza’s opening round of play in this event was a 125-0 blowout for a single-run, very short match). In the final ‘scene’ of the straight pool tournament, He and Max Lechner played about five of them.
Match #1 took them through a rather normal, ‘getting into the groove’ stage, which came to an end with He ahead 28-26, effectively beginning Match #2. At the time, He was seven balls into what would become the start of a 52-ball run. At 73-26, He missed a soft bank shot, and turned the table over to Lechner. For reasons that puzzled Mike Sigel, commenting in the stream booth, and presumably a lot of spectators, Lechner followed a single, made shot with an attempt at a short-stroke combination that failed.
Looking back on that moment and speculating what Lechner might have accomplished, but for the sake of that one, missed ball, that short exchange of the table could well be defined as Match #3. Match #4 began when He also rattled a ball in a hole, attempting a combination, and Lechner headed out on an 88-ball run, which became, at its very end, the longest possible run of the match.
Match #5, which began at the end of Lechner’s run, now ahead 110-84. They both had a couple of short runs, back and forth, which allowed He to close the gap down to 8 at 115-107. In setting up his break ball for a next rack, He scratched. Lechner made his first shot, to make it 116-107, but when he missed the following shot, he vented some frustration, which led to a stick foul, reducing his score back down to 115.
He returned to the table and by the end of that rack had tied the score at 115 and moved on to take a 119-115 lead, his first since he’d been ahead 84-82 in the middle of Lechner’s 88-ball run. The match tied up again at 126, as Lechner passed He and moved on to complete a 17-ball run that put him back out in front by five at 131-126.
The last ‘Mini’ Match (# 6), began when Lechner rattled a ball in a hole to turn the table back over to He, who promptly dropped five balls, leaving one on the table for the next rack and the score tied for the last time at 131. One complete rack of 14 and five balls into the next rack, He had claimed the 2024 International Straight Pool Open title.
For those who have either not been following our daily reports from St. Augustine or would prefer a single story, covering the entire nine-day International Open tournaments, look for such a report in December’s issue of Billiards Buzz, in the opening days of December; https://www.azbilliards.com/buzz/
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