Good Friday action at Calgary's Olympic Oval where the SML Entertainment Open 9-Ball tournament entered its final two days.
Starting the day's play on the B-side at 2 o'clock, Calgary's own favourite, Edwin Montal sent Winnipeg hopeful and recent 3rd place finisher (read - first loser) at the March IPT tour qualifier in Los Angeles, young Eric Hjorleifson packing. Vancouver's resident road warrior and IPT tour player Stan Tourangeau paid the same favour to Calgarian Tyler Edey. The other two B-round matches saw South Dakota's Shane Van Boening and Philipine cool shooting sensation Dennis Orcollo win their matches against Quebecer Alain "The Dancing Bear" Martel and Calgarian Ross Phillips.
The winners from the 2 o'clock matches played off at 4, and Montal shot his smoothest game of the tournament in taking out Van Boening. Orcollo, his game handily back in form, won against Tourangeau.
The A-side was back at 6, and the two-hundred plus crowd at the Oval was treated to some spectacular action with Johnny Archer being taken to the hill for the third straight match only to have his opponent - this time Luc "Machine Gun" Salvas making a miniscule error on a 3-ball safety - give him back an open and easily runnable table in the hill-hill match. Pagulayan, meanwhile, was also up against an unexpected hill-hill match, his being with Winnipeg's Jason Klatt, who scratched long after potting the one-ball after his break. Pagulayan, in typical fashion, jumped up to the table and proceeded with his oh-this-is-so-tough antics for the crowd and seemingly with disregard for his astonished opponent, and then ran the easy table out to secure his visit with Archer Saturday.
Eight o'clock saw Montal take advantage of a chance at repayment by shooting his way to a 9/7 victory over Salvas, who graciously conceded the match when Montal arrived at the 9-ball on the hill. Over in the other 8pm match, Dennis Orcolo, seemingly undisturbed in the least in his b-side pursuit and shooting as consistently perfect as he had all week, handed his opponent Jason Klatt, who seemed to have run out of gas, his pass to join his traveling companion Eric Hjorleifson and head back to Winnipeg.
Saturday will see the tournament come to a surely exciting conclusion as the three Philipinos, Orcollo, Montal and Pagulayan and Atlantan Johnny Archer entertain the enthusiastic Calgary crowd.
Online brackets are updated with all match results.
