2012 Texas Open

Mactiegre · 2012-09-03T14:24:33+00:00

I watched some of the matches from the Texas Open. I have played in the previous 5 or 6. ‎2012 Texas Open gets crank’in with big come-from-behind rallys. - Men’s 1st day highlights. By Mike “Tiger” MacTiegre 80 year old Bob Vanover (8-time winner of Texas Open) thrilled the crowd with terrific ball control to put his opponent Gerald Jimenez in the loser’s bracket. Bob played some astounding safety’s which induced about 6 Ball-in-Hand run-outs to win 9-7. Gerald won the coin toss but had to show Bob how to use the Magic Rack. On Saturday, September 1st thru the 3rd, 128 elite players from around the US and Texas are competing for over $10,000 in Open Division prizes at the longest running 9-ball tournament in US history. Saturday night, the ladies’ 9-ball event began. Brackets are available on AZ Billiards. Again this year they are providing players with the Magic Ball Rack which is a diamond-shaped, thin vinyl template that has holes where you place the Aramith Belgium Super Pro tournament billiard balls and get a perfect rack every time. The table has 2 dots marked on the cloth for the top and the bottom alignment holes, then just place the ball on a hole, and it self-centers itself for a perfect rack. In 2010, they used a metal triangle rack called the Delta-13. Players have always complained about the racking process – it takes too much time and players can tilt the rack for an advantage. On TV, they have a surrogate racking specialist, but here the loser racks for the winner. It is required to drive 4 balls to a rail on the break, else it is a foul. We play Texas Express Rules where the winner breaks. Gerald won the first game when Bob missed a tough 3-ball side pocket cut shot, then ran out. In the second game, Gerald plays a soft-break and is looking at a great opportunity for a run-out, but cuts the 5-ball thick. Bob plays safe on the 6, leaving Gerald a jump over the nine. Gerald misses and gives Bob his first successful safety; Ball-in-Hand. Bob runs out, and makes nothing but noise on the hard break. Gerald misses the one, Bob plays safe on the 2, Gerald miscues on the four, and Vanover runs-out again. Bob makes at least one ball on each of his next 7 breaks and wins 9-6 playing successful safeties virtually every time, then running out. On the table behind the Vanover match, Walt Anderson defeated William Dunsmore 9-3, Jamie Baraks wins a close one over Roger “The Rocket” Griffis 9-8. James “Junior” Davis, Jr. closes out Doctor Bill Hyde 9-5. Later Vanover faced Junior and lost 9-6. Junior gets Jamie Baraks in his next match. Walt Anderson beat Ernesto Bayaua 9-5 and will play Mark Tofoya next. During Sunday afternoon matches, Louis Jones announced that Mr. Vanover was not feeling well and forfeited his match. The crowd gave him a Bob a round of applause for coming back to the Open. We hope he feels better soon and comes back. At 3:15pm, the feature table had Tony Sauls from McKinney, TX playing Gene Albrecht, formally of Eau Claire, MN. Gene struggled in the first couple games and the TV table pressure was too much for Mr. Sauls and he was unable to make a comeback. Gene broke and ran out 2 times and won 9-1. Gene played Leroy Mathis at 1am and Leroy won 9-5 and faces Charlie “Hillbilly” Bryant in the 3rd-round. At 5pm, Corey Deuel broke and ran out 4 to win 9-0 over Lee Murphy. Lee only got to the table 2 times in the first 3 games, and 1 time in the last 3. St. Jude Children’s Hospital Research Charity Pro-Am champion Steven Raynes lost a heart-breaker to Dennis Sneed 9-3. It seemed a lot closer than that. But the best matches of the afternoon as far as I was concerned were seeing local players Earl Ponce (Austin, TX) and Jacob Warriner (Killeen, TX) battle their opponents Tommy Ulbik and 3-time Texas Open Champion Jeremy “JJ” Jones. That is until the 1:15am match, more on that later. Earl came back from being down 6-1 to post 7 in a row to win 9-7 over Tommy. Earl faced Corey Deuel at 1am and lost 9-zip according to the brackets posted online, but I saw one barrel on Earl’s side when they shook hands but never remember him winning a game. JJ was down 4-1 early on table 11. Warriner finally let JJ get on the table and he ran out from the 4 ball. Jacob kept getting amazingly good rolls including some back-to-back s***-shots and was up 7-2 when the magic left him. JJ fought back hard to 7-6, but Jacob played a nice safe which made JJ kick at the 7 ball. The match was now hill-6, and Jacob got down on a straight-in 4-ball with a tough draw to get shape on the 5 and miscues, but gets a fantastic roll with the 8-ball blocking JJ’s shot on the 4. JJ made one of many great bank combination shots I saw tonight; he banked into the 4-8 combo in the side which drew a large applause from the crowd. You could see the air in Jacob’s balloon burst when JJ ran-out from there. He knew that miscue probably cost him the match. Hill-7: Loser racks and Jacob stacks the balls a little differently this time placing the balls in order on the Magic Rack 1, 3-6, 4-9-7, 5-8, 2-ball on the bottom. He re-stacks them because it didn’t look right to him. JJ breaks from the right and makes the 4-ball and has a shot on the 1. Looks like an easy run-out and but his cue ball ran a little too far on the 5 and he had to make a tough fractional cut on the 5-ball to stay alive and got out. Hill-hill. Jacob decides to rack the balls differently again; he racks them 1, 4-7, 6-9-3, 8-5, and 2 on the bottom. JJ comes up empty on the break and Jacob plays safe on the 1-ball. JJ plays safe on the 1-ball also but stops too short by about an eighth of the ball, and that was all Jacob needed, but while he had been getting great rolls all night, the 2-ball was hooked by the three and he had to kick at it and misses and JJ runs out from the 2 to stay in the winners bracket to meet Robb Saez, 2011 Texas Open Champion at 1am. JJ and Jacob exchanged long handshakes congratulating each other for the way they played. Robb Saez had to ralley from behind to win 9-6 against Jeremy to face Corey Deuel in the 3rd round winner’s side. I stopped watching at about 2AM when Jeremy was up 6-1 after playing some amazing safeties and bank-shot combinations. I heard Sunday that Robb Saez got his six-pack without Jeremy coming to the table to win. Robb made 3 balls on the break each time and only had to run 6 6-times in a row. Play continues thru Monday night.