Kaleb Hixon
It had ‘been a minute’ since Kaleb Hixon had cashed at a stop on the PremierBilliards.com’s Q City 9-Ball Tour. As of this past weekend (Sat., Dec. 21), it was actually 3,397,880 minutes, but who’s counting? Hixon had recorded (with us here at AZBilliards) only one previous cash payout and that was on the Q City 9-Ball Tour on January 13, 2018 at Pal’s Bar and Grill in Piedmont, SC. He brought home $100 for finishing in the tie for 5th. This past weekend, four weeks shy of seven years later, he went undefeated to the hot seat and negotiated a split of the top two prizes with Landon Hollingsworth. The $250-added event drew 35 entrants to Action Billiards in Inman, SC.
This is not to say that Hixon has been idle for the past seven years. It just means that any cash payouts he received during that time were not recorded with us here at AZBilliards; not an uncommon phenomenon, given the number of pool tournaments that are run from one end of this country to the other that for one reason or another do not get reported to us. He entered the tournament, racing to ‘6,’ and worked his way through five opponents; two racing to 4 (Caleb Gibson and Bobby Moore), one racing to 5 (Scott Green), one in a straight-up race to 6 (Thomas Sansone) and in the hot seat match, one racing to 7 (Rolando Meza). His first three opponents at the varied skill levels all chalked up three against him; Green, Sansone and Gibson and he drew Bobby Moore in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
Meza, in the meantime (racing to 7), started out with wins over Tommy Tran (2) and Steven Ellis (4). When Chance Vaughn forfeited their scheduled winners’ side quarterfinal, Meza picked up Billy Fowler, the second-highest ranked competitor in the event (racing to 9), in the other winners’ side semifinal. Fowler had just sent Landon Hollingsworth, the highest-ranked competitor, racing to 10, in their winners’ side quarterfinal match.
Hixon downed Moore 6-2, while Meza (who started with two ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 9), defeated Fowler 7-6. In the only match that Hixon played where he was the one with ‘beads on the wire’ (one of them, in a race to 7), he claimed the hot seat over Meza 6-2.
Upon his arrival to the loss side of the bracket, Bobby Moore picked up Hollingsworth, who’d followed his loss to Fowler with a victory over Kirk Hixon (brother to Kaleb) 10-1 before a forfeit by Onyx Stinson put him into the match against Moore. Fowler drew Steven Ellis, who’d lost a second-round match to Meza and headed out on what turned out to be a five-match, loss-side winning streak. He survived two straight double-hill matches against August Boatman and Caleb Gibson before giving up just a single rack to Chris Staton and turning to face Fowler.
With two ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 9, Ellis chalked up his fifth loss-side win 7-6 over Fowler and advanced to the quarterfinals. Bobby Moore got six ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 10 against Hollingsworth, but they weren’t enough. He did get two of the four he needed, but it was Hollingsworth who advanced 10-2 to meet Ellis in the quarterfinals.
Hollingsworth stopped Ellis’ loss-side run with a 10-5 victory in those quarterfinals (Ellis racing to 7). In the semifinals, Hollingsworth eliminated Meza (who started with three beads on the wire in their race to 10) 10-4. Negotiations got underway for the split between Hollingsworth and Hixon. Holiday best wishes were concluded as well, and 2024 was over for the PremierBilliards.com’s Q City 9-Ball Tour.
Tour director Herman Parker thanked Scott and Lisa Green and their Action Billiards staff for their Yuletide hospitality, along with best wishes to title sponsor PremierBilliards.com, BarPoolTables.net, Break Time (Clemmons), TKO Custom Cues, Realty Group One Results, CHC Underground, Digitalpool.com, Dirty South Grind Apparel, Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division and AZBilliards.
The next stop on the PremierBilliards.com’s Q City 9-Ball Tour will be the first stop of the new year, scheduled for the weekend of Jan. 4-5, 2025 and hosted by Borderline Billiards’ Brunswick Arena in Bristol, TN.
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