Chris Mitchell
It was “Chris”mas in May.
At the fourth stop on the Eastern Regional Pool Tour in Mansfield, OH this past weekend (May 20-21), Chris Mitchell and Chris Szuter decided, at around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, to split the event’s top two cash prizes. Szuter had gone undefeated through seven matches to grab the hot seat. Mitchell went undefeated through nine, but didn’t start his winning streak until after Szuter had defeated him in the opening round. Their potential rematch in the finals didn’t happen.
Trouble on the ‘late night/early morning’ horizon was evident when Mitchell won his match against Allen Massengale, determining which of them would finish in the tie for 7th/8th. That match finished about three minutes ahead of the conclusion of the hot seat match between Szuter and Tour Director Eddie Hancock at around 1:30 a.m. That eventually led to a quarterfinal that didn’t finish until just after 3 a.m. and a double-hill semifinal that finished pretty quickly in less than an hour. But it was now near 4 and Szuter and Mitchell opted out of the potential double elimination final.
The Easter Regional Pool Tour, sponsored by Jacoby Custom Cues and the ‘brain-child’ of Ed Hancock from Buckeye Billiards Sports Bar and Chris Wilson from The League Room in Parkersburg, WV, was formed to run the tour at different pool rooms, monthly, to give regional players the opportunity to play on a regular basis. This past weekend’s $1,000-added, 10-ball event drew 44 entrants to Buckeye Billiards in Mansfield.
With Mitchell out of the way, temporarily as it turned out, it was Szuter and Hancock who wended their way through the field for a meetup in the hot seat match. Following his victory over Mitchell, Szuter defeated Jimmy Dean (1), Chase Black (2) and Eric Withrow (4) to show up for a winners’ side semifinal against Nathan Wallace. TD Hancock in the meantime, was busy moving Chris Clark (3), Collin Adkins (double hill) and Pedro Arrona (2) to the loss side, to take on Shane Murphy in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Szuter defeated Wallace 7-4, as Hancock shut out Murphy. Szuter and Hancock then battled to double hill before Szuter dropped the last 10-ball and claimed the hot seat.
On the loss side, Mitchell chalked up loss-side wins #5 and #6 against Arrona 6-4 and shut out Massengale (in that match that concluded at 1:27 a.m.) to draw Wallace. Murphy got Withrow, who’d followed his loss to Szuter with loss-side wins over Dennis Jackson 6-3 and Nate Marshall 6-4.
Both matches for advancement to the quarterfinals went double hill with Mitchell and Murphy doing the advancing over Wallace and Withrow, respectively. Mitchell then defeated Murphy in those quarterfinals 6-4 and followed up with a double-hill win over Hancock in the semifinals.
With dawn approaching in two hours (Sunday, May 21, 6:01 a.m.), Szuter and Mitchell opted out of their potential double-elimination final and called it a (new) day.
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