It was the battle of the up-and-coming young guns at the Tiger Planet Pool Amateur 8-Ball event at First Break, Sterling, VA, with Brandon Shuff and Shawn Toni dominating a small but tough field. Toni took the hot-seat with a convincing win over Alan Duty, while Shuff grinded his way through the one-loss bracket after his loss against Toni on Saturday.
In the final, Shuff took an early lead, going 5-1 ahead in the race to seven single-set final. But Shawn remained determined, and inched closer to make it 5-3. The games see-sawed after that, and Shuff made a tough clearance to avenge his earlier loss 7-5 in front of his home crowd. Alan Duty and 15 year-old Richard Barney filled out third and fourth spots respectively.
In the women's event, Tina Meraglio and Kathleen Lawless, who had just returned from a recent trip together representing a US team in the Dragon Promotions' International Challenge in Korea, faced each other in the first round. Meraglio came through the winner of that match, and then defeated Tina Morfessis to face Cheree Adams for a chance for the hot-seat. Adams scraped by 4-3, while Lawless took care of Morfessis to have another shot at her touring buddy. Meraglio then repeated her win over Lawless to take another stab at Adams in the final. Meraglio dominated the match with a convincing 5-1 win over Adams.
The next Tiger Planet Pool event is a 9-Ball tournament at Winston's Billiards in Rockville, MD, Jun 3-4.
