The North Carolina area (and soon to be Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) finally has a woman's tour under its belt in the form of the Carolina Ladies J. Pechauer Tour. The inaugural event for the tour headed up by Alicia and Michael Putnam took place this past weekend, October 11, 2008, at one of the region's venues Fat Cat's Billiards in Arden, North Carolina. The tour was welcomed by not only players yearning to get back into competition, but by room owner Walt Millard who graciously welcomed the tour to his poolroom.
For a first event, Putnam was very excited to see a total of seventeen players make their way to the stop. Included in the field were Nikki Hollingsworth, Katie Cowan, Rachel Eliazar, Kristen Malone, and Christy Causey.
Hollingsworth ended up being the gal to beat as she went through the field in pure domination mode, taking the hot-seat match over Eliazar. On the one-loss side, Katie Cowan pushed past many opponents as she worked through the west side of the brackets. With an 7-1 race victory over Lara Rossignol, Cowan made her way into the semi-finals where she then faced off with the individual that provided her with her first loss earlier in the tournament (9-8), Eliazar. As we all know, avenging a loss can be quite sweet and in the semis, Cowan did just that in another nail biter 7-6.
Due to time restraints, the finals were cut short and the ladies opted to split the pot at that time instead of returning on Sunday to finish out the race.
Since the tour is in its infant stages, it continues to tweak itself to ensure the players have the best experience available. With that said, the events from here forward will be changed to true double elimination, with races to seven on the winner's side of the chart, and six on the one-loss side.
The tour would like to thank Fat Cat's Billiards for hosting and its sponsors for making this venture possible including title sponsor J. Pechauer Custom Cues, Poison Billiards, Strok-In-Style, RST2 International, and Bebob Publishing.
For more information contact Alicia Putnam (828) 648-3019 hm, (828) 508-1217 mbl, email poolgirla1@bellsouth.net; or Michael Putnam at (828) 734-3937 mbl. The next $500 added stop currently scheduled will be held at Crooked Cue (828) 456-2802, Waynesville, North Carolina, November 8th-9th.
