Chris Paradowski
The G Cue Billiard Store Diamond Pool Tour made its only trip to Tucson this season, with a stop at Pockets on July 15th - 16th. Once again, two new champions were crowned at these events, with El Paso’s Ramon Rodriguez winning the amateur event, and Tucson’s Chris Paradowski winning a marathon final match to capture the open division crown.
Things got underway on Saturday, with 25 players competing in the amateur division. By the luck of the draw, Tucson’s Mike Hamman drew his wife Tracie in the first round of play. Mike won that match going away, but it would be far from the last time fans in attendance would hear from the fairer of the Hammans. Mike Hamman’s trek through the winner’s side included a hill-hill nail biter over Tommy Dilorenzo and wins over Chris Campbell and John Alteri.
Hamman’s opponent for the hot-seat was Ramon Rodriguez. This was Rodriguez’s first DCT tour stop, and he had to play at the top of the Fargo scale, meaning he was giving weight to almost every opponent all weekend long. Rodriguez’s run through the right side of the board consisted of wins over James Bentley, Dakota Conroy, Joe Guerra and Johnny Dearmore.
It appeared that Rodriguez saved his best for last, as he sent Hamman to the one loss side by a convincing 9-3 margin.
On the one loss side, Mike Hamman found a familiar opponent in the form of wife Tracie. After the first round loss to Mike, Tracie put together a 6 match winning streak to challenge Mike in the semi-finals. Unfortunately for Tracie, the rematch with Mike was similar to their first match, with Mike winning 9-1.
The semi-final wasn’t the only rematch with a similar outcome, as Rodriguez scored another 9-3 win over Mike Hamman in the first and only round of the finals.
Sunday’s open division drew a field made up of 16 top players. Stop 1 winner, Gus Briseno, found himself in unfamiliar territory after a first round hill-hill loss to Bret Huth, but he would be back again.
Huth dropped his next match to AJ Jones, who then went on to challenge Chris Paradowski for the hot-seat. That match was fairly lopsided, with Paradowski scoring a 10-3 win.
Meanwhile, Briseno was putting on a 9-ball clinic on the one loss side of the board. Briseno notched wins over Ben Hrabina, Tonee Allin, Tim Christopher and Ruben Silva, by a combined score of 44-9. Briseno then took advantage of a forfeit by Rudy Alameda and then continued his winning ways with an 11-3 win over Jones in the semi-finals.
The finals saw Briseno facing Paradowski in an 11-9 race. The late hour meant nothing to these players as they battled to hill-hill in the first set before Briseno pocketed the final 9-ball. That meant a second set would have to be played to determine the final winner. Again, the match went to hill-hill, but this time it was Paradowski pocketing the final 9-ball and earning the tournament win.
The G Cue Billiard Store Diamond Pool Tour will travel to Las Vegas next month for a stop at Griff’s on August 5th - 6th.
The G Cue Billiard Store Diamond Pool Tour is proudly sponsored by…
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