Day four is complete at the 35th Annual US Open 9-Ball Championship and 18 year old Jesse Engel from Minnesota may be the most hated player left in the tournament. The evening matches started with BCA Hall of Famers Mike Sigel and Earl Strickland each one win away from facing off against each other in round four. Mike Sigel did his part in making the dream match happen by defeating Ivaylo Petrov 11-5. Engel however, had different plans in his match against Strickland. Engel led the majority of the match, but Strickland clawed back to tie the match at 9-9. Strickland got to the hill at 10-9, but a scrath on the break by Strickland led to a run from Engel and a hill-hill match. Engel came up dry on his break and a safety battle broke out before Engel had a shot on the 2-ball that he liked. The pressure got to the youngster as he missed the 2-ball so badly that it went cross corner and found a different pocket willing to accept it. A thin cut on the three by Engel was the last real obstacle he had to face as he knocked The Pearl to the one loss side and broke the hearts of every fan in the building.
Besides the Strickland festivities, the night saw a number of interesting comebacks. On the Accu-Stats table, Lee Van Corteza held a comfortable 7-2 lead before Thorsten Hohmann won nine straight games for the 11-7 win. David Alcaide trailed young gun Beau Runningen 4-0 before winning eleven of twelve games for the 11-5 win. Lastly, Oscar Dominguez raced out to a 4-1 lead over reigning World 9-Ball Champion Francisco Bustamante, only to be stuck in the chair as Bustamante came back for an 11-6 win.
The winners side is now down to just thirty two players with a bevy of great matches lined up for Thursday. A sampling of those matches includes Mika Immonen vs Ricky Yang, Chris Melling vs Lo-Li Win, Ralf Souquet vs Raj Hundal (in a rematch of the Sarajevo finals a week ago), Nick Varner vs Rodney Morris, Thorten Hohmann vs Daryl Peach and Jayson Shaw vs Darren Appleton.
Unfortunately, the day also included the elimination of many players as the field has been cut down to just 96 players. Players knocked from contention on day four included Roberto Gomez, Ronnie Wiseman, Santos Sambajon, George San Souci, Edwin Montal, Scott Frost and Shaun Wilkie.
If you can't make it to Chesapeake this year, you can still follow all of the action with Accu-Stats streaming select matches as well as our online coverage including real time scoring, online brackets, video updates from Samm Diep and photo galleries from Diana Hoppe. Check out all of our coverage at usopen.azbilliards.com
