Sky Woodward, Billy Thorpe and Jonas Comino (Beau Powers)
Carranco and Shooni are winner and runner-up in concurrently-run, 3-Cushion Tournament
They came from everywhere.
With Matchroom points up for grabs at last weekend’s McDermott Classic (March 16-19), pool players came from, literally, around the world to compete. Probably not just exclusively for the single weekend in Massachusetts. The event was divided up between a four-day, $2,500-added, three-cushion tournament (17 entrants) and a three-day $5,000-added Open 9-Ball event (76 entrants); a rarity to see three-cushion events run in conjunction with 9-ball. We assume there was little, if any, confusion about which table competitors were scheduled to use.
The Open 9-Ball winner (Billy Thorpe; undefeated) is from Ohio, the runner-up (Sky Woodward) is from Texas. Oscar Dominguez flew in from the West Coast. Raymond Linares, Donny Mills and Hunter Lombardo hail from Florida, and number of competitors (Mhet Vergara, Del Sim and Michael Yednak, et al) might have taken AMTRAK up there in the Northeast corridor from New York to Boston. There were area locals like Joe Dupuis and Cleiton Rocha (the only player to compete in both events) and international stars like Thorsten Hohmann and Mortiz Neuhausen (Germany), Mickey Krause (Denmark) and a pair from Spain, Jonas Souto and Jose Alberto Delgado.
So, international field meeting in the Boston suburbs. The event was hosted by Amazin’ Billiards, owned by the three-cushion runner-up, Mazin Shooni, in Malden, MA. More on the three-cushion event a bit later, but here’s how the Open 9-Ball played out.
Thorpe’s run to the finish went through Alex Frayberg 9-1 and then, his score-needle got stuck on four racks against Richie Britt, Cleiton Rocha, Connecticut’s former junior competitor Lukas Fracasso-Verner, and Jeremy Sossei, which brought him into a winners’ side semifinal against Moritz Neuhausen. Sky Woodward and Jonas Souto set out on a collision course toward each other in the other winners’ side semifinal; Woodward getting by (among others) Raphael DaBreo (shutout), Sullivan Clark, and Oscar Dominguez, while Souto was busy with (among others) Jesse Engel and in a winners’ side quarterfinal, Raymond Linares.
Souto sent Woodward to the loss side 9-7 and was joined in the hot seat match by Thorpe, who’d defeated Neuhausen 9-6. In what was a tight match that came within a game of double hill, Thorpe claimed the hot seat 11-9 over Souto.
On the loss-side, Neuhausen picked up Fracasso-Verner, who’d followed his loss to Thorpe with a double hill win over Mickey Krause, and then eliminated Donny Mills 9-7, Oscar Dominguez 9-6, and Raymond Linares 9-4. Woodward drew VA’s former junior competitor Shane Wolford, who’d lost his third match to Linares and faced his own ‘laundry list’ of tough competitors, four of them, including Max Eberle 9-6 and Mhet Vergara 9-7 and Sullivan Clark 9-4.
Woodward ended Wolford’s modest loss-side streak 9-6 and in the quarterfinals, faced Nuehausen, who’d ended Fracasso-Verner’s 9-4. Woodward downed Neuhausen 9-7 in those quarterfinals and then, eliminated Souto 11-7 in the semifinals.
Creeping up on eight hours after Thorpe had claimed the hot seat, he and Woodward completed the race-to-13 finals at 3:48 a.m. on Sunday morning. Thorpe grabbed a lead and kept lengthening it to six racks by the time he finished his 13-7 final match to claim the McDermott Classic title.
For those interested, selected matches from the digitalpool bracket can be viewed. Look for the View Recording link on the bracket for further information, as without further ado, we turn attention to the other part of the Bay State billiards weekend report that will never mention anyone dropping a ball into a hole.
The 9-Ball event wasn’t the only event connected to a larger project. While the 9-ball event was connected to the Matchroom Nineball points list, the $2500 added 3 cushion event was part of room owner Mazin Shooni’s rejuvenated 3cushionusa.com project.
The seventeen players in the 3 cushion event were divided into two round robin groups, with the top 3 players from each group advancing to a single elimination board. Craig Powers went undefeated in Group A, and was joined by Ricardo Carranco and Arizona’s Paul Feltman. Group B saw Don Rittenburg, Shooni and Gary Elias advance.
Shooni and Carranco advanced through the first round, and the second round saw both top seeds from the round robin stages beaten, with Shooni beating Powers 40-36 and Carranco eliminating Rittenburg 40-36. The final match saw Carranco with a 40-30 win over Shooni in 41 innings for the tournament win.
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