Karen Corr
They've come at her from every angle; the hot seat/final route, where Karen Corr gets challenged twice by the same player; the three-match, loss-side route, in which a player loses a winners' side semifinal and wins three on the loss side to get a second chance at her, and most recently, the deep-from-the-loss-side route, in which a player comes from deep on the loss side (say, five matches or more) to challenge her in the finals.
The occasion this time around, on the J. Pechauer Northeast Women's Tour, was the Q Masters Mid-Atlantic Women's 9-Ball Open, held on the weekend of August 15-16, offering a $6,000 prize fund, and hosted by the US Open's Barry Behrman at his Q Master Billiards facility in Virginia Beach, VA. Pretty much everyone on the 47-entrant roster was looking to deny Karen Corr her seventh straight win on the JPNEWT. Corr responded with a six-match, 35-8 performance that secured that seventh straight win, and for the third time this year, Briana Miller challenged her in the finals, choosing the only method of the three noted above that she hadn’t tried yet; the ‘deep from the loss side’ (seven wins) route.
Four matches in, with victories over Connie Eddins, Barb Yeager, Nicole Monaco, and Shanna Lewis, Corr had given up only three racks; one each to Eddins, Yeager and Lewis. At this point, in a winners’ side semifinal, she ran into a familiar nemesis, who’d challenged her three times in the finals this year – Tour director Linda Shea. In the meantime, Jia Li, who’d been runner-up to Corr earlier in the month, faced Kim Whitman, who would finish third for the third time this year.
Shea became the first player to chalk up more than a single rack against Corr, but moved to the loss side 7-2. Whitman, in the meantime, sent Li packing 7-4. Corr, apparently not happy with Shea’s second rack against her, gave up only one to Whitman, and sat in the hot seat waiting for Miller to complete her seven-match, loss-side run.
Following victories over Nicole Fleming and Borana Andoni, Miller had been sent to the loss side, by TruTV Hustler, Emily Duddy 7-4. She began her loss-side run with 7-4 victories over Kassandra Bein and Belinda Calhoun, and followed them with a 7-1 win over Iris Cabatit, and a 7-4 victory over Nicole Monaco. This set her up against Shea. Li, in the meantime, picked up Duddy, who’d survived a double hill match against Jacki Duggan and defeated Colleen Shoop 7-2.
Miller downed Shea 7-2 and was denied a rematch against Duddy, when Li defeated her 7-4. Miller took the quarterfinal match against Li 7-4, and gave up only a single rack to Whitman in the semifinals. Corr completed her (yet again) undefeated run with a 7-2 win in the finals.
