But a little wrinkle about shooting that last ball without the balls being racked.... According to one report, Alex did not need one ball at that point, he needed two due to an earlier scoring error. Which brings up the question of how should scoring errors be addressed? It is probably no good for the opponent to jump up at that point and say, "Alex, my buddy just told me that we made a mistake on the score and you still need a ball. Let's look at the video. He says it was rack before last." The rules and regulations do not address how to handle that. At nine ball, I think you correct the score if the actual score can be determined.
A classic case of the wrong score was in a big tournament match with Irving Crane running out and nearly finished with the game. The ref said, as refs did at the time, "Mr. Crane playing for three." Irv plans his run, makes three balls, and happens to freeze the cue ball on the end rail (or some such) after the game ball. At that point the scorekeeper (of which big tournaments had one or two at each table) pipes up and says, "Oops, I added wrong and Mr. Crane still needs a ball." Crane ended up suing the tournament management and I think he won.
Rule sets don't talk about such errors but maybe they should.
