On a beautiful sunny but crisp day January 31st 2010, the 10th stop of the Dominiak Cues Northeast Amateur 10-Ball Tour season went off with 28 players at the beautiful Trick Shot Billiards in Clifton Park, NY.
The tour saw many local Albany, NY area players show up to participate on tour as well as many usual tour regulars like Tom Acciavatti, Paul Picard, John Rich, Norm Vernon, Keith Lauer, Walter Rogowski, Chuck Hill, Gene Hunt, Herold Woods and Tom Wesdorp. The tour also welcomed many new tour players including Mike Lucas, Tom Fleming, Kevin Ray, Kevin Ketz and Mike Fitch.
The top half of the winners side brackets saw Norm Vernon make his way to the hotseat match with wins over Mike Laboissire, Ryan Durnberg, Scott Winchell and Gene Hunt. On the bottom half of the winners side another local John Rich was playing steady and got a bye in the opening round then scored wins over Tom Hebert, Mark Swirsky and Mike Fitch on route to the hotseat match with Norm Vernon. The hotseat match was a closely contested battle with Norm Vernon coming out on top in the hill/hill battle. John Rich would take his seat on the 1 loss side and wait for an opponent to come through to try and get another shot at Norm.
Mike Fitch would be the player that made his way through the 1 loss side after being sent to the B side by John Rich with wins over Kevin Ketz and Gene Hunt. Mike and John would meet up again and play for a spot in the 1 race to 5 finals against Norm Vernon. This rematch would go to the last rack with John Rich once again winner over Mike Fitch. Congrats to Mike Fitch to a very hard fought 3rd place finish.
The finals between Norm Vernon and John Rich kicked off about 7pm and the tour format is a 1 race to 5 finals at all tour stops. Norm got out to an early 2-0 lead, but John Rich was not done yet and battled back to bring the match even 2-2. In game 5 John got down to the 10 ball and was a fairly routine shot, but missed the 10 and left it easy for Norm to take a 3-2 lead. From there John was seemingly out of gas and it was all Norm Vernon to go on and win tour stop #10. Congrats to John Rich on a hard fought 2nd place finish!
Keith Lauer held the winning ticket for the new beautiful Dominiak Cue.
For tour dates and info please visit the tour website www.DominiakCuesTour.com . There will be 13 tour stop dates this season and a tour finale, all tour stops are $25 entry + $10 table time..
On behalf of all the players we thank Bill Dominiak www.DominiakCues.com for his support in sponsoring the tour with adding a new Dominiak Cue to each tour stop.
We would also like to thank our co-sponsors www.LeagueShirts.com and www.Rackemwear.com for their continued support of the tour.
Next tour stop will be at Snooker's in Springfield, MA Sunday February 14th. Hope to see you there!!
