 Shane Van Boening |
Just one week after his disappointing runner up finish at the enjoypool.com 9-Ball Championship, Shane Van Boening made his way through a talented gauntlet of players to win the Predator World 10-Ball Championship.
The tournament drew an all-star field of 96 players to Bankshot Billiards in Jacksonville, Florida this week. That field included such heavy hitters as Alex Pagulayan, Dennis Orcollo, Francisco Bustamante, Johnny Archer, Marlon Manalo, Mika Immonen, Ralf Souquet and Thorsten Hohmann just to name a few.
Van Boening started out playing great with wins in his first three matches by a combined score of 30-10. Then he ran into a roadblock by the name of Danny Harriman and dropped to the one loss side 10-7.
On the one loss side, Van Boening scored back-to-back 10-3 wins over Luc Salvas and Stefan Cohen. Van Boening was then taken to the hill by Lee Van Cortezza before scoring the 10-9 win to make it into the single elimination stage of the event.
Dominant wins over Niels Feijen and Warren Kiamco got Van Boening started in the single elimination stage. Next up for Van Boening was his opponent in the finals last week, Dennis Orcollo. Last week Orcollo, ran off to a 7-0 win over Van Boening. This time though, Van Boening would not allow that to happen. Van Boening took an early lead and got to the hill first at 10-5. Even trailing by five games, Orcollo would not give one inch as he won the next four games before Van Boening ended the match 11-9.
The final match between Van Boening and Cliff Joyner may not have looked like a thriller on paper, but that is exactly what it was. Joyner came out with a 2-0 lead, but Van Boening came back to tie the match at 3-3. Van Boening climbed ahead 5-3, but Joyner came back to tie the score at 5-5. The match stayed close as the players were tied at 8-8, 9-9, 10-10 and 11-11 before Van Boening won the last two games for the 13-11 win.
Van Boening earned $14,000 for first place, while Joyner settled for $6000. A disappointing 9th place finish by Johnny Archer earned him $1,340; just enough to move back to the top of this year's money list.
