Josh Roberts
He won the first, third, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth and this past weekend, Aug. 19-20, the fifteenth event of the debut series now (and forever, presumably) to be known as The Rack Race. Josh Roberts and Mike Davis, Jr. (winner of the 9th event of the series), played three times to claim the final title in the series, with Roberts winning two out of the three; hot seat and the second set of a true double-elimination final. The $4,000-added event drew 46 entrants to Rack & Grill III in Aiken, SC.
A word or two before we roll into the details. The 1st Annual Rack Race is the brain child of Michael Newsome and his wife, Avery Palmer, who explained (individually and separately) that it was basically created to answer his question about what he could to get pool players to attend his regularly scheduled tournaments at each of this three Rack & Grill locations; two in the area of August, GA and one in Aiken, SC, where this latest event was held. The Rack Race evolved out of tournaments that in Georgia were held on the first Saturday of every month. When Newsome opened his third location in Aiken, he scheduled tournaments on the third Saturday of every month. The Rack Race, which began in January, has been alternating its three locations throughout the series.
The Rack Race, cleverly associated with a comic ‘rat’ logo and a suggestion that players “GET THAT CHEDDAR” is based on a points system and an individual event format that offers prizes for both. The individual events offer their own cash prizes, whether you play in a single event or all of them. Three of the 15 (this year and in years to come) are designated as ‘major’ events at which money-added figures make them more attractive than others. The three ‘major’ events in this premier Rack Race schedule offered (in order) $2k (February), $3k (May) and $4k (this past weekend). The second Rack Race will be increasing those amounts for the 2024 Rack Race.
The concurrently-running points system offers competitors the opportunity to win cash in the individual events and to accumulate points leading to an end-of-year Most Valuable Player cash prize; $1,000 for 1st place and $500 for 2nd place. This year’s winner of the MVP award was Mike Wise, who, although he did not win any of the 15 events, was in attendance for them all and earned enough points each time he competed to surpass Roberts, who won six. The second-place prize went to Todd Blackwell, who also attended enough events, placed well in those that he did attend, and also fared better in the ‘points’ battle than Roberts.
So, on to the details of the $4,000-added, final event of the first Rack Race, which, by the way, will begin its second season in January.
Roberts’ winners side path (races to 9) almost got sidetracked in the opening round of play when Robbie Shelley battled him to double hill. Roberts survived that opening round ‘scare’ and advanced through Brian White (3), Dave Cook (3) and Eddie Wahdan (7) to arrive at a winners’ side semifinal against Scott Rabon. Davis, in the meantime, almost got caught up in an opening round double-hill match against Clayton Branham, but he pulled ahead at the end to win 9-7. Davis moved on, sending David Capasso (4), Calvin Le (4) and junior competitor Logan Whitaker (5) to the loss side and arriving at his winners’ side semifinal against John Stallings.
Both matches for advancement to the hot seat match came within a game of double hill, but Roberts and Davis, towards the end, both got out in front by two, defeating Rabon and Stallings 9-7. Given previous battles in which they (combined) allowed opponents (on average) five racks-against, one would have thought that the struggle for the hot seat would be a proverbial ‘barn burner,’ double-hill fight between two of the Rack Race’s most frequent competitors. Roberts gave up only two to claim the hot seat.
On the loss side in races to 7, Logan Whitaker, currently the #7 competitor in the Junior International Championship’s (JIC) series of 2023 18U Boys events and #6 in the JIC’s ProAm division (multi-gender, multi-age), was not in attendance at the 7th stop on the JIC series in Iowa this past weekend, because he was busy making ‘noise’ in Aiken, SC. He followed his loss to Davis with back-to-back double-hill wins over Michael Staubs and Dave Cook to draw Rabon. Stallings picked up a rematch versus Ricky Baugham, whom he’d sent to the loss side in the third winners’ side round. Baugham’s loss-side trip almost ended in his first match, but he survived the double-hill challenge from George Spires to eliminate Clayton Branham, Eddie Wahdan and Larry Jackson to earn the rematch against Stallings.
Stallings defeated Baugham a second time 7-3 and advanced to the quarterfinals. Whitaker got a respite from his loss-side, double-hill matches, downing Rabon 7-3 to join Stallings in the quarterfinals. Apparently enjoying the double-hill struggles, Whitaker did it again, sending Stallings home at the conclusion of the quarterfinals and advancing to his semifinal rematch against Davis.
Whitaker likely tried to return to his double-hill ways, but Davis wanted no part of that. He gave up only three to Whitaker and moved on for what he hoped was going to be a two-match rematch against Roberts in the finals.
Davis thought he’d give the double-hill route a try and sure enough, downed Roberts that way in the opening set of the true double-elimination final. They cut the race to 7 for the second set and as Davis had demonstrated in the semifinals, Roberts wanted no further association with anything even approaching a double-hill second set. He won that second set 7-3 to claim the Rack Race’s final event title and third ‘major’ event of the series.
Tour director Mike Newsome and his wife, Avery Palmer thanked their staff for assistance with all of the Rack Race series events, as well as sponsors Predator, Pepsi, Newsome Distributing, NationalBilliardAcademy.com, Salazar CPA, Garra Fish Spa Experience and DigitalPool. Newsome suggested that anyone interested in the 2024 Rack Race and any aspect of the Rack & Grill series of tournaments should follow their Facebook page – NO-BS Tournaments & Cue Auctions August, GA.
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