'Max' Max Eberle completed an undefeated run through a field of 95 players to win the Pechauer West Coast Tour event at Hard Times Billiards in Bellflower, Ca this weekend.
With the event taking place on the weekend before the UPA Pro Tour Championship, the field was stronger than usual with names such as Jose Parica, Santos Sambajon and Ismael Paez joining Eberle. Eberle was undaunted and opened the tournament with back-to-back 7-1 wins. A win over Tang Hoa in the next round set up a match between Eberle and Corey Harper. Harper had just sent Sambajon packing to the one-loss side, but Eberle proved to be too strong with a hill-hill win over Harper. Eberle made his way to the quarter-final match where he took the hot-seat with a 9-5 win over 'Surfer' Dave Hemmah.
Hemmah had scored impressive wins over Ernesto Dominguez and Glenn Atwell already, but it appeared as if he would have his hands full with the surprise of the tournament, Jimmy Mendoza, on the one-loss side. Mendoza had dropped his first match of the event against Harper, but had come back with 10 wins on the one-loss side. The string of 10 wins included a 7-2 win over Jose Parica, a 7-0 win over Gerardo Jamito and a 7-2 win over Paul Potier.
Mendoza's run of success ended in the semi-finals as Hemmah took complete control of the match and raced to a 7-0 win. Hemmah ran out from everywhere and when he couldn't run out, he left Mendoza locked up tight with little hope of escape.
The win over Mendoza set up the rematch between Hemmah and Eberle in the single race to 13 finals. Max was the first out of the gate in the finals, and he quickly took a 6-1 lead. Hemmah came back with a run of his own and won six of the next seven games to take a 7-6 lead over Eberle. Eberle then came back and won seven of the next eight games to earn the 13-8 victory.
Eberle earned $1000 for first place, with Hemmah settling for $750. Mendoza and Paul Potier filled out the top four spots. Complete brackets from the event are available online.
The Pechauer West Coast Tour will be at Billiard Palacade in San Francisco, CA on February 12th-13th for their next event.
Complete Payouts:
1st Max Eberle $1000
2nd Dave Hemmah $750
3rd Jimmy Mendoza $550
4th Paul Potier $400
5th/6th Elias Valles, Glenn Atwell $275
7th/8th Gerardo Jamito, Morro Paez $180
9th/12th Don McClelland, Wayne Pullen, Damian Alishan, Jon Henson $120
13th/16th Jose Parica, Bernardo Chavez, Lorry DeLeon, Brian Parks $75
17th/24th Chris Pujol, Steve Lingelbach, Mike Massey, Corey Harper, Santos Sambajon, Butch Barba, Fach Garcia, Ramin Bakhtiori $50
