Shane Van Boening
Saturday evening matches at the Diamond Pro Players Championship saw more top players exiting the event, which this year has adopted a new format of three races to eight, with the first player to win two sets is the winner.
In the first match, we saw Shane Van Boening knock World Champion and consecutive two time US Open winner Darren Appleton out of the event.
Next to go out was Corey Deuel, who got his marching orders from Warren Kiamco.
Alex Pagulayan put an end to Jeremy Sossei’s chances of winning the event
as he sent him packing. In the next match Thorsten Hohmann gave Jayson Shaw no wiggle room at all, as he played lights out pool and just stiffled Jaysons efforts by taking the match in two straight sets. Thorsten has been looking so sharp in his last few big events that I expected him to go all the way in this event.
Moving forward to the next bracket, we saw Shane Van Boening take down Warren Kiamco to put himself into the hot seat match with Alex or Thorsten.
Once again Thorsten found his ‘A’ game and beat up on Alex Pagulayan to put himself into a hot seat match with the mighty Shane.
The fans that packed the arena to watch the final matches of the day were not disappointed with the stellar play they witnessed.
Immediately, it looked as though Shane was on a tear and would easily take the title in two straight sets, as he took the first set 8-6. But wait for it, Thorsten never got the memo and and came out firing on all cylinders and came from 7-6 down to win the second set 8-7.
At 3-1 in the final set Shane made a rare uncharacteristic miss on two plays to let Thorsten in to take game five and put the score at 3-2 to Shane. Just as it looked as though Thorsten might stamp his authority on the last set, it was not to be as Shane just dug deep as we have all seen before and moved it into another gear and soon turned the revival plan into a Van Boening plan and piled on the beads till he was on the hill at 7-2.
Now it was Thorstens turn to dig deep as he took the next two games to put the score at 7-4 to Shane. But it was a little too late, as the odds of Mr. Hohmann winning the next four games was pretty well stacked against him. The time had apparently come for Shane to come with the knock out punch, as he broke and made two balls on the break, leaving what was for him an easy run out. He did just that and convincingly beat Thorsten 8-4 in a thrilling match for the appreciative fans in attendance.
Once again, Shane showed us that he is the man to beat as he took down yet another big win on the US Pro Tour. Shane is a machine, methodical, and reliable. He is all of these things and more.
I spoke to Shane immediately after the match and asked if he liked the new format used for this event. Of course I joked that I would guess that the answer would be yes, as he had just won the event. He laughed, and said that he actually liked the event as it gave everybody a chance, as there are three sets up for grabs and that it was good for the fans who get to see a possible three sets played out.
This years Super Billiards Expo certainly looks as though it hit a home run, and I suggest that any players out there that are contemplating visiting next year,put the 13th through 16th March 2014 in their calendars.
