nice9 said:
I just read he won a big tournament at Fort Walton Beach.
Congrats.
Tony was playing GREAT. In the winner's bracket, John Schmidt had him stuck and bleeding 7-2 in a race to 9. Somehow, Tony hung in there and made a phenomenal comeback to win the match. Tony has a very nice personality and is modest when touting his comeback. He sounded more like Efren Reyes when he said I got kind of lucky against John.
I wish I could have stayed for the final several matches but had a long drive ahead of me and with little sleep from the two days that we spent at the tournament, I was eager to get home and rest.
The Andy Grubbs Memorial Tournament at Starcade is an annual event but they have two big tournaments each year and the next one is in the fall.
Hope I can make it again. Perhaps I will increase my level of play and play a little better. I came one match out of the money but had a great time. The match that I lost was to a young man who was delayed in getting to the tournament site by a Mardi Gras parade in Navarre Beach Florida. Robin asked me if I was willing to wait for my opponent. If I say no, my opponent forfeits his match so I tell the owner that I want to wait. I understand legitimate reasons for not being able to make it to your match on time and being from the Mardi Gras City, I had to give my opponent some slack. He responded in kind with a bit of ass-whup.
Anyway, it is a well run tournament with a tradition of top players competing every year and having a great time. There were 103 players at the tournament. Some of the guys from the Gulf Coast (MS) have a tradition of eating some Japanese food at a restaurant called Okinawa and so we visited there and ate some delicious food. The dinner helped soothe the pain of my final loss to my delayed opponent.
Jim Jennings played some very nice pool winning some matches 9-2 & 9-1 as well as a hill-hill match where when in one of his matches the score was 8-7 and Jim had the two choices after the break, roll out or jump over a few balls to pocket the two ball. The one ball fell on the break and his wife was anxious to say the least and said "Oh my, he had better roll-out" and I told her he can't roll out because there is no safe place to roll out to- He's got to jump. She said if he
jumps he's gonna scratch and there was no way in the world for him to scratch. You just had to see the layout. Sure enough he jumps the balls, doesn't pocket the two ball but the cue caroms into another ball and then the cue ball rolls about 5 feet knocking balls along the way and falls into the side pocket. HIs wife hauls off and hits me on the should hard enough to rock me. All I wanted to know is if she was psychic but that just made her even more mad.

Jim made a good out on the hill-hill game to win while I kept his very intense wife restrained.

JoeyA