 |
| Darren Appleton Photo Courtesy of NYC GRIND |
Late Saturday night after six days of grueling competition Darren Appleton was crowned the 14.1 World Tournament Champion. Appleton has been a threat every year he has played this event, I believe he has never finished outside the top 8. Last year he lost in the final to Thorsten Hohmann.
Strangely enough Appleton went through this tournament quietly, as players like Shane Van Boening and Evegeny Stalev were stealing the show. Throughout the entire week, as I was watching on stream no one seemed to favour Appleton despite his 14.1 background. However this did not phase him as he chugged along through the bracket.
In the final four he played crowd favourite Stalev, who is a Russian Billiards player that has converted over to pool. Stalev had been impressing the crowd all week with his 27oz cue and fearless style of play. In one match he got the high run for the tournament at 226. However the experience of Appleton plus the fact that his level of play was increasing dramatically in each match proved to be too much for Stalev.
In the other semi-final match SVB played Max Eberle. With SVB getting an early and commanding lead 148-39 it looked as if he was going to cruise to the final. Eberle was not done just yet putting together a 100 ball run of his own to get right back into the thick of things. Unfortunately for Eberle, right after this run he was forced into a 3 foul situation costing him 15 balls in penalties. From here SVB never looked back and sealed the deal to book his spot in the final.
Appleton played like a man looking for redemption after last years bitter defeat in the the final. He only let SVB have one inning at the table. It only took two innings for Appleton to wrap up this title with runs of 61 then 131 and out. I would like to thank Alison Fischer of NYC GRIND and Upstate AL for making it possible for me to cover this entire event this week and I look forward to the 75th edition of this tournament.
No comments:
Post a Comment