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| Tom Fraser & Erik Hjorleifson |
By: Erik Hjorleifson
This past weekend The Corner Bank in Scarborough, Ontario played host to the second event of the Falcon Cues Ontario tour. The event features a $65 entry with handicaps ranging from "A" to "Pro". A players race to 5, AA race to 6, AAA race to 7, Semi pros race to 8 and 9 and pros race to 10. The tour is an alternate break rack your own format with $2000 added in each event. For the second tour stop participation rose from 24 to 37 players. The tour has been billed as the most competitive tour in Ontario, offering a format where players of all skill levels can put themselves to the test.
John Morra was not in attendance for this event as he is in the west coast preparing for the World Chinese 8 Ball Championship. He has been fairly successful on his trip, posting a win at the Hidden Spot 10 ball shootout in Calgary and a 3rd place finish at Malarkys in Tacoma, Washington. He will be leaving for China on Wednesday. This left the field on the weekend with 3 pros, myself, Mario Morra and Andy Aupin from Sudbury, there were also about 10 Semi pros in including Charlie Brown from B.C. who was in town visiting family.
Saturday play proved to be interesting as a good majority of the on paper favourites were grouped on the bottom half of the draw. Match highlights from Saturday included:
Mario Morra over Andy Aupin
Jeremy Bolahood over Charlie Brown
Jay Georgie over Erik Hjorleifson
Mario Morra over Ben Crawley
Tom Fraser a player who has been away from the game for a few years came in as a AA handicap and surprisingly advanced to finish the day on the winners side including a win over Semi Pro Sumon Sarkar. Carlin Sanderson and Jay Georgie also advanced along with Mario Morra to make up the final four on the winners side. Eight players would also come back on the losers side to make up the final 12 players who were all in the money.
On the Sunday the tight action started off from the get go with Andy Aupin facing off against Jeremy Bolahood. This match which was a 10-8 race with Aupin coming back from 7-5 down to make it hill hill only to have Bolahood break and run in the hill game. Jeremy would also win his next match hill-hill to advance to the final 6. I also won my first 2 including a 10-4 win over Charlie Brown ending a strong run by Charlie. In the winners side semi finals Jay Georgie continued his impressive play defeating his second pro level player of the tournament in Mario Morra. Georgie is more known for his accomplishments on the bar table but he was proving capable on the 9 foot as well this weekend. As the players battled off I would eventually meet up with Jeremy Bolahood in the fourth place match who has been one of the most consistent winners in the past year in the Ontario tournaments. I caught a gear in this match and moved on to the losers side finals with a 10-1 win.
Tom Fraser defeated Georgie in the winners side final setting up a rematch between myself and Georgie who defeated me earlier in the tournament. By this time I was catching a pretty good stroke and I came out with another 10-1 win. In the true double elimination format I would have to bet my opponent twice, I made very few errors and the couple times when I did I got a little fortunate and I won both sets 10 -2. Tom had a great tournament, this is the second time in two weeks that I have seen a player who has had a great result despite not being in regular competition. Tom is a golf professional and his mental game seemed very strong and without having the practice of being in competition this was a big factor in his strong play this weekend. Special thanks goes out to room owners John White and Jim Wych for running another smooth tournament and Falcon Cues for their generous donation of a $1000 value cue which was raffled off at the event and added to the prize fund.
Payouts:
1st Erik Hjorleifson $1100
2nd Tom Fraser $700
3rd Jay Georgie $500
4th Jeremy Bolahood $350
5th Mario Morra $230
Carlin Sanderson
7th Bill Delkos
Charlie Brown $150
9th Andy Aupin $100
Sumon Sarkar
Marius Nakas
Ben Crawley
Player Auction
1st $1000
2nd $600
3rd $350
4th $240
5th $130
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