Josh Roberts (Karl Kantrowitz)
This past week, Michael Catanese welcomed players and fans to his room, Iron City Billiards, in Birmingham, AL.
The $17,000 added Iron City Open had plenty of action including One Ball One Pocket, One Pocket, Open 9 Ball and Ladies 9 Ball divisions.
Top players included Efren Reyes, Roberto Gomez, Roland Garcia, Sky Woodward, Omar Alshaheen, Tony Chohan, Josh Roberts, Cliff Joyner, Manny Perez, Justyn Cone, Manny Chau, Sergio Rivas, Monica Webb, Ming Ng, April Larson, Jeannie Seaver and Kaylee McIntosh.
Tuesday evening, the $1,000 added single elimination One Ball One Pocket division kicked off with a players auction and draw. Racing to four with alternate breaks, fourteen players paid a $200 entry to play.
First round action saw the legendary Efren defeating Cliff Joyner 4-0 as did Omar over Roland with an identical score.
Second round was a battle for Chohan & Alshaheen – Tony prevailed 4-3. Roberts and Cone also duked it out with Josh defeating Justyn 4-3.
Still undefeated, Efren beat David Ferguson 4-2 while the much anticipated Chohan-Roberts match resulted in another win for Josh – 4-1.
The final match was another nailbiter as Josh defeated Efren 4-3 to take the title.
The $7,000 double elimination one pocket division began on Wednesday evening. Featuring a $1,000 entry fee, twelve players would race to four with alternate break.
After the players auction and draw, first round saw Garcia blister Woodward as did Reyes over Chau and Cone over Jason Brown with identical scores of 4-1. Gomez had a tougher time with Chohan but emerged the victor 4-3. Joyner, Alshaheen, Roberts and Jason Hill drew the coveted byes.
In the second round, Alshaheen breezed through Brown 4-0, Gomez defeated Joyner 4-1, Garcia beat Hill 4-2 and Roberts eked out a tough win over Reyes.
Things got tougher as Garcia was edged out by Alshaheen 4-3 as did Roberts versus Gomez. Omar and Josh advanced to the hot seat match. The hot seat match was all Roberts as he skunked Alshaheen 4-0. Omar headed west to wait for an opponent.
Over on the one loss side of the chart, both Garcia and Gomez faced their challengers successfully and would now face each other. Roland managed to get past Roberto 4-3 only to lose by the same score against Omar.
In a well-played single extended race to six, the players battled fiercely for the title. Showing he was the one pocket champ for the week, it was again “The Beast,” Josh Roberts, who defeated “The Tiger,” Omar Alshaheen 6-4!!!
In addition to the main events, a $500 added 9 Ball Banks Mini was held on Tuesday night as well as a $500 added 9 Ball Mini on Wednesday. The 9 Ball Banks Mini was won by Kevin Ping over Sky Woodward and the 9 Ball Mini was won by Manny Chau over Chris Davenport.
PoolActionTV.com would like to thank Mike and his staff for going the extra mile to take care of all the players and fans.
In addition, we’d like to thank Tournament Directors Daryl Keplinger, Jason Hill and Ray Hansen for doing such a great job. We’d also like to thank Jeremy Jones and Larry Schwartz for their excellent commentary.
We’d also like to thank our fans and sponsors. Our sponsors include Outsville, JB Cases, Hanshew Jump Cues, StraightPoolEye, Lomax Custom Cues, Durbin Custom Cues, Diamond Billiard Products, Aramith, Simonis, RG Billiards of Birmingham, AL, the Action Palace of Dayton, OH and Fort Worth Billiards Superstore of Fort Worth, TX.
