Anthony Meglino
He didn’t have to face every competitor in the 71-entrant field of this past weekend’s (Aug. 31-Sept. 1) $2,000-added Labor Day tournament ($500-added to a Second Chance tournament) at Zingale’s Billiard Room and Sports Bar in Tallahassee, FL, but he did compete against 13 of them; one out of every five or six in the field (the actual percentage is between the two). Anthony Meglino, in search of his first (recorded) major win in almost two years, lost his opening match to Billy Burke, double hill, and then downed 11 in a row to earn a shot at hot seat occupant, Justin Hall. He defeated him rather handily in the first of two sets and then battled him to double hill in the second set, before winning it to claim the title.
Once Meglino had begun his loss-side trek, it was Hall and Mike Davis, Jr. who set out from opposite ends of the bracket for their meetup in the hot seat match. Hall won four of the six matches he played to get into that hot seat match by shutouts over Gina Cerasoli, Felix Luna, Thomas White and in the winners’ side semifinal that put him into the hot seat match, Carlo Cabarlo. Added to the two each that he gave up to Mike Fierman and Kyle Bova in the middle of all that, Hall came into the hot seat match with a game-winning percentage of 90%. (36-4).
Mike Davis, Jr.’s game-winning percentage wasn’t too shabby either. There was a shutout over Mark Chapman, for starters. Then he gave up a single rack each, to Jason Beyer and Sean Meadows, before giving up three each to Mike Delawder, and in the other winners’ side semifinal, Trenton White; 30-8, just shy of 80%.
So the guy who’d played 40 games and (on average) won 9 out of every 10 of them, faced off against the guy who’d played 38 games and won 4 of every 5. It was a setup for a good hot seat match, that didn’t really happen. The ‘9 out of 10’ guy (Hall) won ‘3 out of 4’ in the battle for the hot seat, claiming it 6-2 over Davis.
Meanwhile, on the loss side, Meglino was efficiently plodding along. He got underway on that side of the bracket the same way Hall had started out on the winners’ side – with a shutout over Gina Cerasoli – and then gave up one each to Jon Gore and Doug Johnson before the racks against him started to accumulate. He gave up four each, then two each and just prior to facing Trenton White, coming over from his winners’ side semifinal loss to Davis, he had to contend with a double-hill challenge from Joselito Martinez.
He survived that challenge and sporting a 72%, loss-side, game-winning average (48-9), he downed White 6-3 (dropping his loss-side average by a few percentage points) and advanced to the quarterfinals. He faced Mike Delawder, who’d followed his winners’ side quarterfinal loss to Davis with victories over David Grossman 6-4, Thomas White 6-1 and then, Carlos Cabarlo 6-3. Meglino chalked up his 10th loss-side victory by giving up just a single rack to Delawder in that quarterfinal matchup.
As one might have expected from the hot seat match, the Meglino/Davis semifinal had all the ‘makings’ of a mighty struggle for advancement, which also didn’t happen. Meglino punched his ticket to the finals with a somewhat ‘pedestrian’ 6-2 win over Davis.
Hall had to wait for over two and a half hours following the conclusion of the hot seat match to begin the final (according to ‘time stamps’ on the digitalpool bracket). This, no doubt, played a role in Meglino’s 6-1, first-set victory. As most pool matches will do when the desire to win is more or less equal for both competitors, the second set went double-hill. Meglino finished it to claim the event title.
“This tournament was kind of an experiment,” said room owner, Mike Zingale. “A lot of the 700 to 750 (Fargo-rated) players were complaining that there weren’t any tournaments for them because of all the ‘under 600 and under 650’ tournaments.”
“So,” he added, “we came up with the idea of having a tiered-entry system; $75/$150/$250, based on your Fargo rating. Seemed to work really well. We had 71 entrants and it wasn’t a ‘marathon’ tournament, where you’re playing until 3 or 4 in the morning.”
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