Daniel Mobley
While the annual Super Billiards Expo (SBE) appeared to have drawn a large majority of the pool playing public to the Philadelphia area on the last weekend in March (nearly 3,000 attended), it didn’t draw everybody. It did, though, have a way of dampening attendance at relatively nearby tournaments scheduled on the same weekend, like the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour. On Saturday, March 30, Buck’s Billiards in Raleigh played host to a tournament that drew 21 entrants, and saw Daniel Mobley go undefeated through that field to win his first stop on the tour.
According to our records, Mobley had cashed in an event only once before and it was on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour four years ago at a stop hosted by Borderline Billiards in Bristol, TN. Mobley finished fifth in the event that was won by Jonathan Pinegar, who, while Mobley was working on his first major victory this past Saturday, was in the midst of the SBE’s Pro Am Bar Box Championship that he would go on to win.
In the meantime, Mobley and Zac Leonard were working their way through the field at Buck’s Billiards where they’d meet twice to determine the event winner. They met first in the hot seat match, once Mobley had sent Matt Clifton to the loss side 5-2 in one of the winners’ side semifinals, and Leonard had downed Matt Raden 7-2 in the other one. Mobley claimed the hot seat over Leonard 5-4 (Leonard racing to 7).
On the loss side, Clifton and Raden ran right into their second straight loss. Clifton drew Ricky Dickson, who’d defeated Dave Brown 5-4 (Brown racing to 8) and Greg Speight 5-3. Raden drew a re-match against JT Ringgold, the tour’s most prolific winner, who, after his defeat at Raden’s hands, launched a six-match, loss-side winning streak that would take him as far as the semifinals. Ringgold had most recently survived a double hill fight against Robbie House (11-6) and eliminated Elton Howard by the same score.
Ringgold won the re-match against Raden 11-3 and moved into the first-money-round quarterfinals against Dickson, who’d survived a straight-up race to 5, double hill match against Clifton. Ringgold won his last match in those quarterfinals, 11-3 over Dickson.
The Ringgold-Leonard matchup in the semifinals was predictably tight. Leonard, with the lower handicap started the match with four on the wire in a race to 11. Ringgold made it to 9, one game away from a double hill, deciding match, but Leonard chalked up his seventh rack to end it.
In the finals, it was Leonard playing with the higher handicap, looking to unseat Mobley, who started the match with two on the wire in a race to 7. To his credit, Mobley improved on his 5-4 victory in the hot seat match by giving up only a single rack to Leonard and claiming the event title 5-1.
Tour directors Herman and Angela Parker thanked the ownership and staff at Buck’s Billiards, as well as title sponsor Viking Cues, Bar Pool Tables, Delta 13 Racks, AZ Billiards and Professor Q-Ball. The next stop on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for this weekend (April 6-7), will be a $500-added event, hosted by Speakeazy Billiards in Sanford, NC.
