Bobby Gonzales, Ernesto Bayaua, and Victor Rojas
Q Stix Billiards was the last stop of the year for the Texas Amateur Tour held over the weekend of the 18-19th of December. The event had $900 added and saw players from along way for this one. We had them from as far as Odessa,Texas. We would like to thanks those who made that long journey and hope to see them again.
Things kicked off Saturday with 58 players in the amateur division and was played down to the final 16 who would come back and fight it out for the green on Sunday. This event unlike the past few did not see as many upsets. The final 8 of the winner side on Sunday looked like this: Victor Rojas vs. Cesar Arechiga, Bobby Gonzales vs. Will Felder, Ray Porter vs. Ernesto Bayaua, and Raymond Cardenas vs. Roy Payton.
The Sunday shakedown went something like this, Victor got by Cesar 11-5, Bobby 11-5 over Will, Ernesto 11-3 over Ray, and Roy 11-4 over Raymond. The next round saw Bobby squeak a tight one out over Victor 11-8 to earn a berth in the hot seat match and on the bottom half of the bracket Ernesto blitzed Roy 11-0. This set up a match that went game for game all the way up to 8-8, then Ernesto got the last 3 racks to secure the win in the hot seat match over Bobby.
The one loss side 13-16th place round started out with Chris Young over Brian Rosenbaum 9-7, Bill Fain over Gerald ”Topwater” Jackson 9-5, Jose Delacruz got by Richard Rodriguez 9-5, and Sonny Bosshamer 9-6 over Adam Farr. The 9-12th place round went down like this Ray Porter over Sonny B 9-6, Jose Delacruz squeaked by Raymond Cardenas 9-8, Bill Fain knocked Cesar Arechiga out 9-4, and Will Felder beat Chris“Happy Hour”Young 9-5. Up next the 7-8th place round saw Bill over Will by a score of 9-5, and Ray over Jose 9-6. So to the 5-6th place round and we saw Roy Payton rabound and score a win over bill Fain 9-5, and on the other half Victor Rojas ended Ray Porters day 9-6. This made for the 4th place match up between two seasoned warriors, Roy Payton and Victor Rojas, both wanting the win to get a shot at Bobby Gonzaled who was waiting in the wings. In the match it went game for game till 6-6, then Victor got the last 3 games to take the match down and move on to face Bobby G.
The finals of the one loss side saw Bobby Gonzales face Victor Rojas and what a treat this match was, it went hill-hill and on the case game Bobby broke had no shot rolled out, cue ball froze to the end rail, Victor ponders for a few minutes then makes the best shot of the tournament, an amazing back cut on the 1, BUT then came the tragedy, the side pocket swallowed the cue ball. With ball in paw Bobby disposed of the rack and got his chance at Ernesto again in the finals.
The finals was very brief and the fastest match played all weekend it seemed, and Ernesto came out firing on all cylinders and scored an impressive 11-4 victory. Congrats to Ernesto for his victory, he shot super all weekend long.
The second chance event was chopped by Don Bullard and Ricki Casper. Congrats.
We would like to thank all of our sponsors Htownbilliards.com, kamuitips.com, Jay Helfert, author of Pool Wars and Gil Castillo of castilloleathergoods.com. We would also like to thank room owner J.J and Vanessa Rone.
