The Tiger Tour returned to Champion Billiards Café in Arlington, VA on September 13th /14th for event #9. This was a $2000 added event made possible by the room owners and Tiger Tour sponsors. This room is a player owned room and a player favorite in Northern Virginia.
Danny Green, tour founder and winner of last month's special Open Pocket event, started out strong with wins over Dustin Paris and Andy Lincoln. He followed that up by defeating a tough Scott Tollefson to advance to Sunday's final four winner side. Shaun Wilkie worked his way through 4 matches for his trip to Sunday. The top half of the bracket saw Matt Krah easily advance including a 9-4 win over current points' leader Manuel Chau. Ilir Jaho joined these players on the winner side.
On Sunday, Krah advanced past Jaho and Green took down Wilkie by identical 9-6 scores. The hot seat match was uneventful as Green defeated Wilkie 9-6. The elimination bracket was being fought out with veteran Ed Deska working his way forward. Quality wins over Shane Jackson and Tollefson were followed up with a 9-2 win over Jaho. Wilkie recovered from his loss to Green to squeak past Chau 9-8 before ending Deska's run 9-6. Wilkie earned a rematch with Green after downing Krah 9-6.
The single set final race to 11 between Green and Wilkie stayed close the whole way. At hill-hill, both players seemed unable to close the deal. There were several challenging table layouts that prevented the easy out. It was Danny Green who finally snapped out of it to take the win. 1st paid $900 with $600 for 2nd.
A small but strong group of 10 ladies entered the Sunday Women's division event. All 10 of these ladies have placed in the money on the Tiger Tour so there were no easy matches. Cheryl Squire, sponsored on tour by Big Daddy's Billiards, started her day out with big wins over Ming Ng 7-4 and Linda Shea 7-2. Rachel Eliazar from North Carolina has been playing well lately and sent Squire to the elimination bracket 7-5. Ji-Hyun Park took care of the top half of the bracket with a pair of 7-5 wins over Pauline Mattes and tour owner Ceci Strain. Eliazar captured the hot seat by a 7-4 margin.
In the elimination bracket, Ng and Shea rolled through their matches before meeting up. Shea put Ng into the 4th spot with a 5-4 decision. Another 5-4 score eliminated Park putting Shea into the single set final race to 9 with Eliazar. Shea turned it on at this point winning the final comfortably 9-3. 1st paid $300 with $200 for 2nd.
