Daniel Adams
At 4 a.m. on the Sunday morning of a Labor Day weekend pool tournament, a reduction in pay in exchange for going home immediately can look pretty good. So it was for Daniel Adams, Mark Bolton and Billy Fowler, who arrived at such a decision-making moment on Sunday morning, Sept. 4, at what became the end of a $500-added stop on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour that drew 36 entrants to the Breaktime Billiards in Winston-Salem, NC. Adams, in the hot seat, became the official winner. Mark Bolton, whom he’d defeated in the hot seat match, moved to the loss side and was to compete against Fowler in the semifinals that didn’t happen.
The negotiated settlement between the players is a private matter. The player who occupied the hot seat at the time becomes the event’s official winner and has officially earned the event’s top cash prize. So, too, with the runner-up and third-place finisher. How they split those three cash amounts up is their business. An even, three-way split would have given each of them a little over $515, although there’s no way of knowing if that was the ‘deal’ they worked out. In any case, the amount that went to Adams turned 2022 into his best recorded earnings year to date. Any amount over $100 would have done it. According to our records, it was Adams’ second 2022 win on the tour, his fourth overall since he chalked up his first win in what, before this past weekend, had been his best earnings year, 2017.
Adams, Bolton and Fowler were three of the four competitors who advanced through the field to compete in the event’s two winners’ side semifinals. Adams faced the fourth, Jamie Bowen, while Bolton and Fowler squared off against each other.
Adams downed Bowen 6-1, as Bolton was working on sending Fowler to the loss side 8-4. In what was, in effect, the title match, Adams defeated Bolton 6-3 to claim the hot seat.
When Bowen and Fowler arrived on the loss side, they competed in what was the first money round and two of the event’s last three matches. Bowen picked up Matt Lucas, who’d eliminated Stevie McLinton and the room owner’s junior-competitor son, Jas Makhani, both 6-1. Fowler drew Josh Heeter, who’d survived two straight double-hill matches to reach him; the first, against Brian Overman (10-5) and the second, against Jayce Little (10-4).
Bowen sent Lucas home 6-3. Heeter followed him out the door (so to speak) at the conclusion of Fowler’s 9-2 victory over him. Fowler won the event’s final match, the quarterfinals, 9-2 over Bowen. The three-way split was negotiated and the combatants retreated to neutral corners to enjoy the remaining two days of their Labor Day weekend.
Tour director Herman Parker thanked Sundeep Makhani and his Breaktime Billiards staff for their hospitality, as well as title sponsor Viking Cues, Breaktime Billiards (Winston-Salem, NC), BarPoolTables.net, Dirty South Grind Apparel Co., Realty One Group Results, Diamond Brat, AZBilliards.com, Ridge Back Rails, and Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division. The next stop on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for this weekend (Sept. 10-11), will be a $500-added event, hosted by The Clubhouse in Lynchburg, VA.
0 comments