Nick De Leon (Photo courtesy of Rick Schmitz)
The fourth season of the Diamond Pool Tour kicked off with new sponsors and a new format. The tournaments are now one big bracket with full Fargo races based on the higher rated player’s rating.
As expected, this led to top players being forced to bring their “A Game” each and every match as they were giving up huge spots to lower rated players. Even with those spots, the tournament came down to some of the top Fargo rated players in the event.
A prime example of the spot in this event was Nick De Leon’s first match against Joshua Murphy, 171 Fargo points led to De Leon giving up six games for a 10-4 race. He would be pushed to the hill by Murphy before scoring the 10-3 win. De Leon’s journey through the winner’s side didn’t get any easier with wins over “The voice of the Diamond Pool Tour” George Teyechea, Nick Cipiti, Gil Franco and Rick Armbrust to get to the hot-seat match.
De Leon’s hot-seat opponent also had a tough path to the hot-seat match, as Tom Dilorenzo (who still doesn’t think his game is better than 75% of his current speed) scored notable wins over Scott Chadwick, James Main, Todd Dilley and Kurt Siebels.
The hot-seat match saw De Leon forced to give DiLorenzo three racks for a 10-7 race. DiLorenzo has probably been playing pool longer than his opponent has been alive, and he gave De Leon all he could handle before De Leon came out on top of the match 10-6.
In the past six months, After dropping the match to De Leon on the winner’s side, Rick Armbrust had wins on the left side of the board over Bret Huth and Jason Sweet (with neither win taking advantage of any handicap). Armbrust finally fell to DiLorenzo 9-6 in the semi-final match.
After their hill-hill battle for the hot-seat, fans in attendance were expecting another great match, and they weren’t disappointed as the two players battled to another hill-hill score before De Leon pocketed the final 9-ball for first place.
The Diamond Pool Tour is sponsored by …
J Pechauer Custom Cues
Arizona Natural Selections
Casino Del Sol
JB Cases
Aramith
Simonis
