With a tournament as full of top players as the 39th Simonis/Aramith US Open 9-Ball Championship, players are going to have to navigate a veritable minefield of talent to advance. Some of those draws are, of course, tougher than others. With the first round pairing of US Open rookie Skyler Woodward and Filipino veteran "The Lion" Alex Pagulayan, most fans in attendance chalked it up as just a tough draw for the youngster. They were right about it being a tough draw, they just had the wrong victim in mind.
Woodward and Pagulayan kept the match close early as they traded leads at 3-2 and 4-3, then Woodward caught a gear. From 4-3 down, Woodward won seven games to stun the veteran and take the hill at 10-4. Pagulayan, never one to stress over a match situation, came back and won four straight to make it a match at 10-8 before the Filipino legend missed a 4-ball and Woodward smoothly ran out the rack for the 11-8 upset of the day.
"I never really felt nervous" said Woodward after the match. "I just tried to play the best pool I could play". For those critics who count out Woodward in big events like this because of his perceived bar table specialization, Woodward had some bad news for you. "I grew up on a barbox and that is really all we had, but we just got a 9 foot Diamond and I have been playing on it all that I can".
Tuesday morning play saw the beginnings of player eliminations, and a number of top favorites were in danger of suffering a much shorter event than they had planned. Niels Feijen began the day with a powerful match against Chris Pyle where he made an 11-0 statement to forget his loss yesterday to Maz Eberle.
Raj Hundal sent Chuck Ralston home 11-7 and Adam Smith did the same to Israel Rota with an identical score. Mike Delawder took out Paul Potier 11-8 and Imaran Majid ended the run of the only female in the field, Dana Aft, 11-5. Tony Drago gave a speed shooting exhibition as he defeated Chris Cantrall 11-0 in only 25 minutes!
John Schmidt played very well today and took out local favorite Eric Moore 11-6.
Mosconi Cup hopeful Brandon Shuff, another victim of a very tough draw, suffered his second loss of the event to Rodney Morris 11-5 and will be a spectator for the rest of the week here.
Matt Krah won an 11-9 battle with Brett Stottlemyer, while another top youngster Danny Olson sent east coast legend Frankie Hernandez home with a "2 and out" scoreline.
Follow all of the action all week with our online brackets and real time scoring. Select matches are available online as part of Accu-Stats' Pay Per Video video coverage at www.accu-stats.com
