 Tony Butera and Erik Hjorleifson |
Bigwigs Billiards in New Market Ontario was the site for the latest Canadian 30k Tour stop on July 14, 2007. As always, the Bigwigs team offered an extremely clean environment and boasted newly Simonis-clothed tables.
The field was a combination of varying handicaps, with the top picks going toward Erik Hjorleifson, Chris Orme, Rob Brandenburg, and Scott McDonald. In addition to these top dogs, there were many other players that were clearly a danger in the competitive arena, including George Cornelius, Mike Leigh, Elio D'Andrea, Dennis Rhodes, Ken Botham, Rob Blair, Tol Kuy.
The final four players on the winner's side of the brackets placed Dave Woods (5+) against Tony Butera (5), with Tony taking the win by a score of 5-4; and Elio D'Andrea (7) against Mike Leigh (7), with Mike becoming the victor with a double hill score of 7-6.
The “hot seat” match was played between Tony Butera (5) and Mike Leigh (7). Tony must not have enjoyed being down 4-1 as he was able to turn the match around and take the last four racks to win the match 5-4, sending Mike to the one-loss side in disbelief to grind his way through the remaining field.
On the one-loss side, the action continued with Elio D'Andrea (7) defeating Chris Courteaux (6) with a score of 7-4, and Erik Hjorleifson (9+) taking control of his match against Dave Woods (5+) to win 9-2.
Moving on we saw Erik Hjorleifson (9+) defeat Elio D'Andrea (7) with a score of 10-4, putting Elio out of the tournament in fourth place; only to then have Erik send Mike Leigh (7) home with a final score of 10-0.
In the event finals, amateur player Tony Butera was able to take control for his first win by sending Erik Hjorleifson out of the tournament in a respectable second place finish.
The next event scheduled for August 11, 2007, will once again be held at Bigwigs Billiards.
