Clint Walker and Luis Jiminez
The event was postponed a day due to weather, but that didn’t stop a field of twenty eight players from making it out to Players Billiards in Eatontown, NJ for the $300 added second stop on the Garden State Pool Tour’s 2022 season on January 30th.
The field was evenly split between A/B players and C/D players with fourteen players on each side of the chart.
Clint Walker was once again in the driver’s seat, winning the C/D side of the bracket with wins over Tommy Bedard, Alex Vangelov, Kervin Santamaria and tour newcomer Luigi Damina.
The man to beat on the A/B side of the bracket was Luis Jiminez with wins over Hunter Sullivan, Dawn Hopkins, Fernando Bentancourt and homeroom favorite Patrick Langley.
The hot-seat match saw Walker send Jiminez to the one loss side with a 7-6 win. Jiminez found Santamaria waiting on the one loss side for a rematch but that rematch would again go to Jiminez, earning him another shot at Walker in the finals.
The final match was a modified race to 7/9 with Walker getting one game on the wire. Jiminez would have to get to seven first, in order to push the match to a race to nine. Both players exchanged racks to get the match underway, and Walker held a slim 3-2 lead before Jiminez took control and won seven straight racks for his first win on the tour.
The Garden State Pool Tour will be back in action on February 12th at Rockaway Billiards in Rockaway, NJ for another AB/CD 9-Ball event.
