BJ Ussery
Pool-match scores can be deceptive. A shutout is not always the breeze that it would appear to be, because the score doesn’t (as an example) tell you how many of the games featured long safety battles or whether the winner just happened to drop only the 9-ball in all of the games (highly unlikely, but impossible to know from just the score). By the same token, a double-hill match is not always the nail-biting, back and forth struggle that its score might indicate, although double-hill matches do have a way of highlighting a pair of opponents who are evenly matched, or, at minimum, evenly matched on that day. Aggregate scores can be misleading as well. The fact that a competitor chalks up an aggregate, game-winning total that indicates, as an example, he/she won, on average, somewhere in the vicinity of three out of every four games played is not necessarily an indication that he/she swept through a field like a proverbial knife through soft butter.
In other words, pool’s funny that way. On any given day, a player can shoot very well and lose, while another player can shoot poorly and win. You can’t tell which it was from the score alone.
All things considered, BJ Ussery’s undefeated run through a field of 114 entrants who signed on to PremierBilliards.com TOP Tour’s $5,000-added, 4th Annual Ron Park Memorial at West End Billiards in Gastonia, NC this past Memorial Day weekend (May 27-28), was an impressive case of playing well and winning. He fell short of winning the ‘three-out-of-every-four games’ threshold noted above, but only by percentage points. He won 42 of his first 61 games (68.8%) and 14 of his last 16 (87%), to finish with an overall game-winning average of 72.7% (56-21). Just over half of his game losses, 11 of them, were recorded in just two matches. He faced seven opponents in eight matches and shut out three of them.
“At a certain level,” said BJ, after waking up on Monday afternoon, having been at the tables until about 4 a.m., “double-hill matches and shutouts are very close to being the same thing. It’s a loss. You make a couple of mistakes and you lose.”
Included in the ‘mistakes’ department of course, are things like losing the lag for the first break and allowing your opponent to run out (1-0). Then you scratch on your first break and your opponent runs out again (2-0). Then, as your opponent is winning the games he breaks, you break dry twice in a row, followed with two wins for your opponent and suddenly, you’re on the hill at 6-0 in a race to 7.
“It’s either that,” Ussery noted, “or sometimes players will get into a ‘give up’ mode and start shooting at balls that they shouldn’t; hitting them at 200 mph to make something happen.”
“You just have to make sure you’re making balls or pushing out,” he added, “because the same thing could happen to you.”
Runner-up Clint Clark, who ended up playing 16 more games than Ussery (93/77), spread his games-against numbers around a little more evenly to arrive at his first of two against Ussery. He was only three percentage points behind Ussery in the games-won department (42-22, 65.6%) when they squared off in the hot seat match.
In Ussery’s first four matches, he was winning better than three out of every four games he played. Matt Collins in the first round and Landon Hollingsworth in the third, chalked up four against him, while Barry Mashburn in the second round and Chuck Ritchie in the fourth didn’t win any. Ussery stepped up to his first (and only) double-hill challenge, against Scott Roberts, in a winners’ side quarterfinal. Ussery prevailed to draw John Stallings in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” said Ussery of his one and only double-hill match. “Scott is a good bar-table player and the last four times we’ve played together, it’s gone hill-hill.”
“He’s always been on the cusp of almost getting there,” he added. “He broke really well and is an under-rated bar-table player for sure.”
Clark, in the meantime, was spreading the games-against wealth around. He gave up two to Gage Smith, three to Boo Hargrave, four to Hank Powell and three to Daniel Heidrich before, like Ussery, running into his first (of two) double-hill challenges in a winners’ side quarterfinal that he won versus Zackary Martin. He drew Kelly Farrar in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Ussery gave up only two racks to Stallings, advancing to the hot seat match. Clark joined him after defeating Farrar 7-4. Ussery claimed the hot seat over Clark by chalking up his third shutout.
On the loss side, Farrar picked up Joey Tate, who’s working on his final year as a junior competitor, and was also working on an eight-match winning streak that had recently eliminated the competitor who’d given Ussery his double-hill challenge in the winners’ side quarterfinal, Scott Roberts. Tate defeated him 7-3 and then, downed Brian Capps 7-5 to face Farrar. Stallings drew Brian (David) White, who’d been responsible for sending Tate to the loss side and followed him over when Scott Roberts (an apparent force-to-be-reckoned-with) defeated him. White had just ended the pool-playing part of Tyler Chappel and Zackary Taylor’s Memorial Day weekend (7-4, 7-0).
Both matches for advancement to the quarterfinals went double hill, with Farrar and Stallings putting an end to any chance for a Tate/White rematch. Farrar then ended Stalling’s single-match, loss-side campaign 7-3 in those quarterfinals.
“I’ll tell you,” said Ussery, “when it was down to the final six, I really thought and told my girlfriend that I was going to have to be playing Joey Tate. He was playing really well, but I think the time just wore on him.”
Farrar and Clark then locked up in a double-hill rematch in the semifinals. Clark dropped the last 9-ball to earn his rematch against Ussery in the finals. Ussery completed his undefeated run with a 7-2 victory to claim title to the 4th Annual Ron Park Memorial.
Ussery is well on his way to making 2023 his best (recorded) earnings year and this win didn’t hurt. He’s already surpassed his 2022 figure and if he doubles what he’s brought home through the end of May so far, it’ll make 2023 his best year by a lot. He’s already at #66 on the AZBilliards Leaderboard (before this past weekend) and looking to take a few more steps up the earnings/level-of-competition ladder.
According to Ussery, the improvement over the past few years hasn’t been as much about practice as it has been about just the general increase in the number of tournaments in which he’s been competing. That, combined with something of an upgrade to the types of tournaments he’s been seeking out.
“I practice a little bit more,” he said, “but it’s more about competing every weekend, instead of every other weekend. It ‘keeps you in the grease.”
As a short-term goal, to accompany his ongoing climb ‘up the ladder,’ he’s looking to chalk up some more Matchroom points to move himself into contention as a member of the USA’s Mosconi Cup team, to draw the attention of players, who, in the past, may not have given him much thought.
“To make the other guys sweat,” he said, “because now they have to think about me.”
Tour director Herman Parker thanked the ownership and staff at West End Billiards, as well as title sponsor PremierBilliards.com, BarPoolTables.net, Dirty South Grind Apparel Co., Realty One Group Results, Diamond Brat, AZBilliards.com, Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division and TKO Custom Cues.
The next stop on the PremierBilliards.com’s TOP Tour, scheduled for July 15-16, will be a $1,000-added, 9-ball event, hosted by Breakers in Mosheim, TN. As we submitted this report, the PremierBilliards’ Q City 9-Ball Tour (handicapped) is working on organizing an event for this weekend (June 3-4), about which further information may be found on the TOP Tour and Q City 9-Ball Tour’s FB page. The next firmly scheduled event on the Q City 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for June 10-11, will be a $250-added 9-ball event, hosted by Mickey Milligans in New Bern, NC.
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