Hunter Lombardo (Photo courtesy of Taylor Workman)
Day three was full of action at the Turning Stone Classic XXX in Verona, NY.
The late Friday upset victims, Mika Immonen and Billy Thorpe, were both eliminated from the tournament early on day three as Immonen fell to Canada’s Dany Normandin 9-4 and Thorpe fell to Brandon Shuff 9-5.
Jayson Shaw and Earl Strickland were both sent to the one loss side early on Saturday. Shaw fell to Finland’ Olli Turkulainen 9-8 and Strickland lost a 9-7 match to Joss tour favorite Bucky Souvanthong. Turkulainen and Souvanthong were then sent to join the players on the one loss side after losses to Shane Van Boeing and Johnny Archer respectively.
The story of the day on Saturday was the play of Hunter Lombardo. Lombardo is a regular at Turning Stone, but has never finished higher than 7th place. This time, he has quietly scored win after win on the right side of the board. A 9-7 win over Pat Fleming was followed by a 9-1 trouncing of Demitrios Jelatis. At the time of this writing, Lombardo is locked up in a tough match with Archer to determine who will meet Van Boening for the hot-seat.
AzBilliards will have online brackets and real time scoring for the duration of the event, and Upstate Al is streaming select matches on his Facebook page. Links to all of this coverage are available on our live page for the event.
