Dennis Orcollo (File photo courtesy of Erwin Dionisio)
Dennis Orcollo may have come up short in the One Pocket Division at the Texas Open, losing by one rack to Roberto Gomez in the finals, but he left very little doubt as to who the best player in the event was in the 9-ball division.
Orcollo kicked off his campaign with five dominating match wins that included wins over Ruben Bautista, the aforementioned Gomez and Tony Chohan. That string of five matches saw Orcollo win by an aggregate score of 45-9.
Orcollo’s match against Sergio Rivas in the sixth round would be the closest he would let an opponent get to him, and that was still a fairly one sided 9-5 win.
Orcollo’s hot-seat opponent, Team USA member Billy Thorpe, was putting together an equally dominating performance of his own on this weekend with notable wins over Ernesto Dominguez and Alex Pagulayan. The 9-5 win over Pagulayan was the closest Thorpe would allow an opponent to get, leading up to the hot-seat match.
The hot-seat match was when Orcollo truly rose to the occasion. He won that match in a quick 9-3 contest, sending Thorpe to the left side of the board to face Jeffrey De Luna. The semi-final with De Luna was not the finest performance by either player with five days seeming to take its toll on the players. Thorpe would eventually win that match 9-8, but Orcollo was showing none of the “five day fatigue” shown in the semi-final match as he scored another dominating 9-4 win over Thorpe in the finals to remain undefeated in first place.
The Texas Open was the 47th running of this annual event, and featured $18,000 in guaranteed added money across the 9-ball and one pocket divisions, as well as a single elimination mini tournament on Wednesday and a break contest that was held across the entire event. Notably absent on this weekend was the Women’s 9-Ball Championship that is usually held alongside the open events. Due to occupancy restrictions, the decision was made to postpone the Women’s event until this coming weekend. The event will take place November 7-8 with a guaranteed $3000 in added prize.
We will have a more complete report from this event in the upcoming issue of the Billiards Buzz online magazine.
