Wiktor Zielinski (John Gallagher)
Frost wins $5K-added One Pocket, Olson claims $1k-added One Ball/One Pocket title
The two events overlapped, which had a way of reducing the number of players who competed in both. The 2024 US Open events at Griff’s in Las Vegas last week (four of them) began on Sunday, March 3 and didn’t conclude until just after midnight on March 17. The three events of the McDermott Classic at Amazin’ Billiards in Malden, MA, got underway on Tuesday, March 12, with its main-event, 9-Ball tournament commencing on Friday, March 15.
While it might have been possible to compete in the US Open’s 10-Ball, 8-Ball and Open Banks competition which ended on Tuesday, March 12, and arrive in Boston in plenty of time to compete in the main-event 9-ball tournament of the McDermott Classic, it would have made for a hectic couple of weeks. That said, four of the top eight finishers in the McDermott Classic 9-Ball event this past weekend had competed in the US Open’s 10-Ball and 8-Ball competition before boarding a plane, presumably, at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and flying to Boston’s Logan Airport.
Shane Van Boening, who won three of the US Open’s four events (see report elsewhere in our News archive), was not on the plane. Neither were (brief examples) Lee Vann Corteza, Billy Thorpe, Carlo Biado or T-Rex (Tony Chohan), to name just a few. By the same token, the list of those who did not compete in the US Open and opted for an appearance at the McDermott Classic, which offered competitors the opportunity to rack up Matchroom World Nineball Tour Points, included a long list of top-tier competitors like (brief examples) Tyler Styer, David Alcaide, Jeremy Sossei, Mortiz Neuhausen, Chris Reinhold, Shane Wolford, Shaun Wilkie and, a bit of a surprise, Mike Dechaine, coming down from the rockbound coasts of Maine to rejoin the land of the living (pool players).
Poland’s Wiktor Zielinski, who won the only US Open tournament that Van Boening did not win (8-ball), went undefeated to claim the $10,000-added McDermott Classic 9-Ball title, which drew 77 entrants to Amazin’ Billiards. Joining him just outside Beantown for the event were fellow US Open competitors Germany’s Joshua Filler and Austria’s Mario He (who tied for 3rd in the single-elimination format) and Spain’s Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz, who finished in the four-way tie for 5th.
The first event of the McDermott week, which began on Tuesday, March 12, was the $1,000-added One Ball/One Pocket tournament, which drew 20 entrants. Danny Olson went undefeated to claim that title, downing Lukas Fracasso-Verner in a double-hill final match. The $5,000-added One Pocket event which drew 30 entrants began the next day (Wednesday, March 13) and was won by Scott Frost, who also went undefeated and also downed Lukas Fracasso-Verner in the final of that event.
Beginning at the beginning, the 20 entrants in the One Ball/One Pocket event engaged in a single-elimination process that gave 12 of them an opening round bye as four matches got underway to bring the field down to 16. Danny Olson and Lukas Fracasso-Verner set out from opposite ends of the bracket for their meetup in the finals. Olson (with a bye), started out with wins over Paul Song 4-2 and Scott Frost 4-1 to draw Denmark’s Mickey Krause in one of the semifinals. Fracasso-Verner, also with a bye, defeated AJ Ajmera 4-1 and Raphael DaBreo 4-2 to pick up Michael Singsen in the other semifinal.
Olson and Krause locked up in a double-hill fight that eventually put Olson into the final. Fracasso-Verner eliminated Singsen 4-2. Olson and Fracasso-Verner made it a double-hill final with Olson claiming the title.
In a seriously modified, double-elimination bracket, the One Pocket event’s 30 competitors started out traditionally enough in a double-elimination bracket, which advanced eight competitors, four from each side of the bracket to a sort-of single-elimination phase. Normally, this would yield one winner, one runner-up, two 3rd place finishers and four 5th place finishers, but the McDermott folks added a consolation playoff. The two players who lost the semifinal engaged in a one-match playoff that determined a 3rd and 4th place. The four players who lost the opening round of single-elimination, competed in two matches that created two 5th and two 6th place finishers.
In the double-elimination Phase 1 of this event, the winners of the One Ball/One Pocket event, Olson and Fracasso-Verner, would have met in the fourth round, had there been one, but their victories in the third round just advanced them to single elimination, where they met in the second round. In addition to Olson and Fracasso-Verner, Scott Frost and Jeremy Sossei advanced to single elimination from the winners’ side of the double-elimination bracket. Shane Wolford, Nicholas DeLeon, Tyler Styer and Wiktor Zielinski advanced from the loss side. Zielenski, who didn’t complete his undefeated run to claim the US Open 8-Ball title until late on Friday night (March 8), was at the tables for the One Pocket event, ‘ready to rumble’ on Wednesday morning, March 13. Not exactly still in jet lag territory, but certainly continuing to make time-zone adjustments and possibly, moving from Vegas to Boston, forgetting that he couldn’t walk out of his hotel in a short sleeve shirt.
Not surprisingly, Olson and Fracasso-Verner, who shut out their first-round, single-elimination opponents, locked up in a double-hill, semifinal match that advanced Fracasso-Verner to the One Pocket finals against Scott Frost. Frost had given up just a single rack in his opener against Tyler Styer and none in his semifinal win over Zielinski.
The three ‘consolation’ matches preceded the final. Nicholas DeLeon and Jeremy Jones finished 5th; DeLeon downing Shane Wolford 3-1, as Jeremy Jones defeated Tyler Styer, double-hill. Zielinski finished 3rd with a 3-1 victory over Danny Olson. Frost gave up just a single rack to Fracasso-Verner in the final and claimed the One Pocket title.
Zielinski shrugs off any lingering environmental adjustments, goes undefeated in 9-Ball
Though no path to a victory in a top-professionals event like the McDermott Classic’s 9-Ball tournament is going to be easy, Wiktor Zielenski, with a FargoRate of 821, faced only one opponent with a higher FargoRate, Joshua Filler (848), another of the competitors who flew from Vegas to be in Boston (Shane Van Boening at 837 didn’t make the trip). None of the other six that Zielinski faced – three each in the two, single-elimination phases of the 9-Ball Classic – had FargoRates above 800. Tyler Styer, whom Zielinski had to defeat twice, had the next highest FargoRate (778) of Zielinski’s non-Joshua Filler opponents.
Zielinski and Styer met first in the third Stage 1 round, once Zielinski had defeated two opponents, one with a FargoRate below 700 and the other with a FargoRate below 600, by an aggregate score of 19-2; the ‘below 600’ opponent (Jason Walsh) chalking up the ‘2.’ Zielinski took the opening round of their individual bout with each other 10-8, advancing as a result to single-elimination from the winners’ side of Phase 1. They’d meet again in the event final.
Joining Zielinski among the other 15 advancing to Stage 2 were five USA representatives; Shane Wolford, Jeremy Sossei, Oscar Dominguez, Sam Henderson and Styer, who’d advanced from the loss side of Stage 1 action with a victory over Eric Roberts 8-6. Also advancing were the three other competitors, mentioned earlier, who travelled from Vegas to eventually join Zielinski among the event’s final eight; Joshua Filler, Mario He and Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz.
In races to 11, at this point along his undefeated road to the event win, Zielinski’s path went through Martin Daigle (1) and Mickey Krause (8) before it came up against his toughest, FargoRated opponent, in the event semifinals, Joshua Filler. Tyler Styer navigated his way to the same place with victories over an arguably tougher (FargoRated) set of opponents, all of them with higher FargoRates; opening against Moritz Neuhausen (11-6) and Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz (11-8) before drawing Mario He (810) in the other semifinal.
Styer battled He to double-hill in their semifinal and eventually, dropped the final 9-ball, advancing to the finals. Zeilinski and Filler almost got to double hill, but Zielinski pulled out in front to win it 11-9.
Styer came into the finals at the tail end of a week of competition in one place. He’d been defeated by Scott Frost in both the One Pocket and One Ball/One Pocket events. The first time (0-4) eliminated Styer from the One Ball/One Pocket event. The second time (1-4) sent him to the consolation round(s) of the One Pocket event, where he was defeated, double hill, by Jeremy Jones. Styer was stepping into a personal “Last Chance Saloon” for what he hoped was going to result in a victory ‘shot.’
Zielinski came in looking for a second undefeated victory in the same week of competition, in two locations, 2,715 miles apart. His was a “Second Chance Saloon” in which he was looking for a victory ‘shot’ that he could probably use. With the FargoRate odds very much in his favor (in 100 games, he’d be expected to win 77 of them), Zielenski grabbed his victory ‘shot’ with a 13-8 victory that earned him the McDermott Classic title.
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