Joey Tate
For the second time in a little over a month, a junior competitor has claimed a Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour Championship. Last month (Dec. 4-5), South Carolina’s Landon Hollingsworth became the first player in the nine-year history of the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour Championships (9 ft. tables) to win that event twice in a row. This past weekend (Jan. 8-9), North Carolina’s Joey Tate went undefeated to claim the tour’s 9th Annual Bar Box Tour Championships. Hollingsworth and Tate were winner and runner-up at the Junior International Championships’ (JIC’s) 18 & Under Boys final held this past October in conjunction with the International Open in Norfolk, VA. The $1,000-added Bar Box event drew 94 entrants to Break & Run Billiards in Chesnee, SC.
Tate faced another junior competitor in the finals of the event. Though not active in the JIC’s year-long series of events in 2021, Cole Lewis has been among the top five finishers in eight Q City 9-Ball events and won two of them last year, including the last 2021 tour stop just before Christmas at the Clubhouse in Lynchburg, VA. He and Tate advanced through the field to arrive at winners’ side semifinals against Jason Blackwell (for Lewis) and Haskell Brown (for Tate).
Blackwell sent Lewis to the loss side 6-2 and advanced to the hot seat match. Tate joined him after downing Brown 8-2. Tate and Blackwell fought to double hill before Tate prevailed to claim the hot seat.
On the loss side, Lewis began his journey back to the finals against multiple-tour-winner Billy Fowler, who’d recently defeated two Justins, Knuckles 10-3 and Duncan 10-1, to reach him. Justin Knuckles had entered his match against Duncan, having just defeated Joey Tate’s father, Randy Tate 6-0. Brown drew Steven Ellis, who’d lost his opening match and begun an eight-match, loss-side winning streak that was about to end. He’d recently eliminated Michael Rabon 7-1 and BJ Hucks 7-5.
Brown stopped Ellis’ loss side run 7-5. He was joined in the quarterfinals by Lewis, who dropped Fowler 8-5. Lewis then defeated Brown in those quarterfinals and earned himself a rematch against Blackwell in the semifinals.
Lewis had a markedly different second shot against Blackwell, who’d sent him to the loss side 6-2 in their winners’ side semifinal match. In the event semifinals, Lewis got a shot at Tate in the hot seat with an 8-5 victory over Blackwell.
Tate, though, was not to be denied. He finished his championship run with a single set, 8-4 win over Lewis, giving him his third overall win on the tour since 2018.
Tour director Herman Parker thanked the ownership and staff at Break & Run Billiards, as well as title sponsor Viking Cues, BarPoolTables.net, Dirty South Grind Apparel Co., Realty One Group Results, Diamond Brat, AZBilliards.com, and Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division. The next stop on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for this weekend, Jan. 15-16, will be a handicapped, Scotch Double event, hosted by Corner Pockets in Fayetteville, NC.
