Pat Fleming, Snookers room owner Paul Troxell and Jeremy Sossei
When Pat Fleming first announced that he wanted to step away from the “day to day” workings of Accu-Stats Video Productions, one of the reasons that he cited was the desire to spend time working more on his pool game. Apparently that work is paying off, as Fleming cruised through day one of last weekends New England Pool & Billiard Fall of Fame 9-Ball Open at Snookers in Providence, Rhode Island on March 4th – 5th undefeated.
Fleming made his way through day one of the field of 109 players with convincing wins over Dave Fontaine, Luca Bares, Steve Tavernier and Jim Prather. Sunday matches were looking like a repeat of the day one performance, as Fleming defeated Kevin Bauccio and Pete Genovese to get to the hot-seat match.
The hot-seat match turned out to be a clash of two different types of “experience”. Fleming used to run 100 balls every day in practice, but that practice was many years ago. Sossei has “current experience” on the Joss Tour, with well over 30 tour stop wins under his belt. Sossei came out on top of the hot-seat match with a 7-2 win to send Fleming to the one loss side.
On the left side of the board, Fleming ran into another tour regular, in the form of tour points leader Ron Casanzio. Casanzio has even more Joss Tour titles than Sossei, and just keeps winning. Fleming came through in the semi-final match though, and eliminated Casanzio in 3rd place 7-6.
The rematch between Sossei and Fleming in the finals looked to be just about complete with Sossei holding a 6-4 lead. Fleming wasn’t done though, as he came back to win three straight games, to win the first set 7-6. Sossei took a break and gave himself a pep talk. “ I took a bathroom break after the first set and I was thinking to myself if I play solid I will win” Sossei remembered. Sossei indeed did play solid and he did win, by the score of 7-4 in the second set.
Looking back after the event, Sossei had nothing but compliments for Fleming’s play all weekend. ““Pat was playing very solid. I don’t really remember him missing many balls on that tight table” said Sossei. “I hope when I’m his age, I’m playing half as good as he is”.
In Sunday’s second chance event, Jordan Emerson went undefeated through a field of 21 players to win his first career second chance title. Emerson defeated Mike Salerno for the hot-seat 3-1 and then defeated Brian Tierney 3-2, in the first set of the finals.
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