It was playwright David Mamet who made the observation that “old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.” It’s hard to designate the two matches of the double elimination final on the Viking Cues’ Q City 9-Ball Tour this past weekend (Dec. 3) as a victory of ‘old age’ and ‘treachery’ over ‘youth’ and ‘exuberance,’ because while it’s true that the winner, Mac Harrell, is older than the runner-up, Graham Swinson, Harrell could not reasonably be considered to be in the realm of ‘old age’ or to have applied ‘treachery’ in double-dipping Swinson in the two matches that they played against each other. Hard to argue with Swinson’s youthful exuberance though. Swinson is 22 now, but he and Harrell have known each other for a number of years, dating back to a time when Swinson was attending Riverside High School in Williamstown, North Carolina and Mac Harrell was his math teacher. Q City 9-Ball Tour Director, Herman Parker, recalled that the two have played against each other over the past few years or so, but never, to his recollection, in the finals of an event before. They have both won stops on the tour, almost exactly a year apart, at the same location; Harrell four months ago and Swinson, a year and four months ago. The meeting led to some boisterous commentary on both sides in the $250-added event that drew 18 entrants to Mickey Milligan’s in New Bern, NC.
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