It was the second time in a row on the Western New York Tour that Dave Grau found himself in the hot seat. On Saturday, November 22, at Eastridge Billiards in Rochester, NY, tour director Nick Brucato won 11 on the loss side to meet and defeat him in the finals of a triple-elimination format tournament called the 8-Ball Grind. On Saturday, December 20, at the final 2014 stop on the tour, dubbed The Jingle Grind, again at Eastridge Billiards, Grau did it again, working his way through a field of 52. This time, though, he defeated his challenger in the finals, Angelo Inness, and claimed the event title.
The rarely-seen triple elimination format creates a third bracket, into which players who've chalked up a loss on the normal losers' side bracket are sent. Those players play a single game and the winners are eventually woven back into the final stages of the normal losers' side bracket. The format creates some puzzling, late-stage information; like (in this most recent event) Louis Recio, who won a loss-side match, competing for the 9/12 finish, moved to the third bracket, won a match and then finished in that 9/12 slot, when he lost a match to Dylan Stuck.
No bracket confusion for Grau, though. It was a straight shot to the hot seat, which went through Seth Tamavoughn among the winners' side final four. Daryl Stuck (father of the two Stucks in the tournament) squared off against Inness in the other winners' side semifinal. Two 3-1 scores put Grau and Stuck in the hot seat match, where a third 3-1 score sent Stuck to the semifinals.
On the loss side, Tamavoughn met up, first, with the son in the Stuck clan, Dylan, and after defeating him 2-1, faced Jason Hunt, who'd defeated Al McGuin 2-1. Inness drew Jeff Montgomery, who came from the third bracket to meet him. Tamavoughn defeated Hunt 1-0, as Inness ended Montgomery's day 2-1. In another peculiarity of the triple elimination format, the quarterfinals were between Daryl Stuck, fresh off his defeat at the hands of Grau in the hot seat, and Tamavoughn. A single game decided the quarterfinal, and the elder Stuck moved on to face Inness in the semifinals.
Inness defeated Stuck 2-1, and got a shot at Grau in the hot seat. Perhaps, with the sting of his runner-up performance a month earlier still in his head, Grau completed his undefeated run with a 3-1 victory over Inness in the finals.
