The Tiger Products Planet Pool Tour held their annual US Open Warmup event at Great Slates in Cambridge Maryland with a full field of 64 players. With nearly half of that field on their way to the US Open, the fans were certainly not going to be disappointed in the play for this event.
Five time US Open winner Earl Strickland almost found himself on the wrong side of the board in his first match, but pulled out a hill-hill win over Jerry Slivka. The match with Slivka certainly got Strickland's attention as he went on to take the hot-seat with a 9-4 win over Shawn Putnam.
Putnam's opponent on the one loss side was BJ Ussery, who had lost to Strickland 9-3. Ussery dropped the match to Putnam 7-4 to set up a rematch between Putnam and Strickland in the finals.
Putnam came out on fire in the finals and quickly raced to a 7-1 lead. From there, Putnam was able to keep Strickland at bay and win the match 11-6.
Putnam earned $2300 for first place, while Strickland settled for $1500. Ussery and Warren Kiamco filled out the top four spots.
The Planet Pool Tour will be at Champion Billiards Cafe in Rockville, MD for their next event on October 8th-9th.
Complete Results:
1st Shawn Putnam $2300
2nd Earl Strickland $1500
3rd BJ Ussery $1000
4th Warren Kiamco $700
5th/6th Jose Parica, Mike Davis $450
7th/8th Deo Alpajora, Tony Crosby $300
9th/12th Steve Lillis, Richard Broumpton, Jason Kirkwood, Chris Szuter $200
