Tacoma, WA - Everyone may have stuffed themselves with turkey on Thanksgiving, but they were apparently hungry for pool as an astounding 96 players showed up to compete at City Lights Billiards for the Pechauer Tour's season kick-off Saturday Nov 26. Andrea Saenz-Maes and Ray Orr stepped up to offer much needed help and made it possible for the tournament to start on time. Matches spread across the eleven Gold Crowns and ran like clockwork until midnight! Top players ended up clumped together here and there with some surprise early exits by IPT's Mike Zimmerman and Linda Carter, as well as Washington's top one pocket player John Doherty, and Dan Louie, another one of the region's most feared competitors. Molly Oliver, the top female player in the event sent one guy after another on his way until she was stopped in her tracks just shy of the money rounds by Ed Hobbs. On The Wire, promoters of the tour, put together a $50 top woman bonus, as it is a tradition for the City Lights stop.
By Sunday morning the field had been pared down to 24. The feature match of the morning was the winner-bracket match of Glenn Atwell and Rich "The Hat" Geiler. Atwell dominated the match and raced to a swift 9-4 victory. Robert Colby, a name generally unfamiliar to West Coast pool, continued his march on the bottom half of the winner's bracket to meet Atwell and battle for the point. Colby hails from the Seattle area, and despite the fact that he is a very capable "A" player, he seemed almost surprised to be so far along! Atwell continued his pool mastery in the point match against Colby, and that coupled with Colby's nerves led to a quick 9-1 slaughtering.
On the backside, Tinsley Johnson of Modesto, CA prepared himself for a tear to the finals. He lost to Geiler on the front side and started the morning out with a long road ahead. He struggled through the am matches fighting the bright sunshine pouring in all the windows of City Lights. Johnson really amped up in his match against Bobby Zack, he stayed at the top of his game knowing that the former San Franciscan would send him back to Cali in a heartbeat. Johnson rolled through Zack 7-4, slopped in balls in the hill-hill game against Raul Abenojar, and almost did the same to Rich Geiler in the 4th place position! After being down in the match, Johnson worked his way back to a hill-hill scenario, got a very fortuitous roll by pocketing a fluke ball when all of the sudden the pool gods intervened to serve up an equally bad roll with a scratch after a bank shot giving "The Hat" a two ball out with ball-in-hand. That match took all of it out of "The Hat" as he dogged four 9-balls in the next match against Robert Colby.
The single race to 13 finals turned out to be the Glenn Atwell show, yet again. Colby jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, but Atwell got it in gear and sped to the finals without a glance in the rearview mirror. So, Atwell started the 2005 season, the same way he started the 2004 season - a winner!
Complete Payouts:
1st Glenn Atwell $1000
2nd Robert Colby $750
3rd Rich Geiler $500
4th Tinsley Johnson $350
5th/6th Raul Abenojar, Mark Edwards $250
7th/8th Bob Zack, Brady Gollan $160
9th/12th Jerry Johnson, Frank Rocha, James Davee, Jeff Jerome $90
13th/16th Cocomo, Mike Vidas, Junior Sardoncillo, Scott Thurston $60
17th/24th LeRoy Dorsey, Jay Siongco, Don Wirtaman, Scott Chandler, Miguel Morfin, Todd Marsh, Jay Pintar, Ed Hobbs $40
