On January 23, 2005 at Breakers Billiards in Palatka, the new North Florida Fury Amateur tour began. In a field of 26 tough players, Julio Aquino rose to the top to follow up his win last week on the Central Florida Fury tour.
The tournament's heavy-hitters, Aquino and Steve Howitt traveled through the tournament undefeated and met up to determine who would take the hot seat. The match went double hill, 6-6 to make it exciting; but Aquino took the last rack for a 7-6 win to secure his place as king of the hill. This sent Howitt to the B side semifinals to face Jason Gard who was put on the loser's side by a tough hill-hill loss. Howitt was ready to get back into the finals and took the match over Gard with a 5-3 score.
In the finals, a rematch between Howitt and Aquino, it was again going to be a close match. Howitt steadily kept his lead at 6-4 in the race to nine until Aquino broke his stride with a 9 on the snap to trail 6-5. Aquino followed this up with another winning rack to make it tied at 6-6. Howitt took this opportunity to break and run and edge ahead to 7-6. This didn?t slow Aquino's comeback down though as he won the next three games to close out the match at 9-7 and take first place.
Results:
1st Julio Aquino $415
2nd Steve Howitt $265
3rd Jason Gard $165
4th Justin Mason (Mase) $95
5th/6th Dave Ross, David Swinehart $50
