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| Winner Jason Klatt with Angus McInyre |
By: Erik Hjorleifson
This past weekend the Corner Bank in Scarborough, Ontario held the annual Vince McItnyre memorial tournament sponsored by Molson breweries. It has been about 4 years since Vince's passing and his involvement in the Ontario pool community is sorely missed. Vince was an active sponsor of myself and John Morra and many other top players in the area.
He also was known to enjoy a good "challenge match" and was a perennial favorite in any team competition he entered. This weekend was a great way to honour his memory with so many top players showing up to compete for the title at his favourite game, bar table 8 ball. Vince's brother Angus McIntyre made the trip down from Alberta to honour his memory and many fond memories were shared throughout the weekend.
The format was $5000 added, 8 ball,race to 8 on the winners side, race to 6 on the losers side with alternate breaks. Play would be on 15 newly clothed Diamond bar tables, the festivities kicked off on Thursday night with the player auction. The first two choices of the field went for a total of $7700 combined, John Morra was chosen first and Jason Klatt went second. Myself, Tyler Styer, Andy Aupin and Ben Crawley also went for high amounts.
Play began Friday morning. The draw was fairly spread out among the top four favourites but there would be many players looking to take a shot at the them with 67 total entrants including most of the best players in Ontario. Former Canadian bar table champion Rob Hall drew into John Morra in the second round and John served notice that he was ready to play with an impressive 8-0 win. Jason Klatt also took on former World Junior English 8 ball champion Ben Crawley, Jason would come away with an 8 4 victory in this one.
Day two would see the field eliminated down to 12 players. The feature match of the day was between Tyler Styer and Jason Klatt, this match was very close with Jason edging out Tyler 8-6. Andy Aupin from Sudbury, myself and John Morra also advanced undefeated into Sunday play. Mario Morra, Louis Fazekas and Alain Lessard were the strongest threats still alive on the losers side.
In the winners side semi final matches John Morra and I had a match filled with run outs seeing John get the final edge, Jason Klatt also defeated Andy Aupin 8-2. With the shortened race on the losers side and all of the players left in the tournament playing at a very high level it was anyone's game. Mario Morra not known for playing much on the bar table made a respectable run all the way to 4th place finally being defeated by Tyler Styer.
John Morra defeated Klatt in the winners side final who would now face Styer in the third place match. This proved to be another close one with Klatt edging out Styer 6-4. This set up a rematch between arguably the two best players in the tournament, these two have battled many times on Canadian soil. Today was Jason's day as he double dipped John 8-2 and 8-6 scoring a very well deserved win.
Special thanks goes out to the Corner Bank along with John White and Frank Kakouros for running the tournament. The Corner Bank has continued to raise the bar for competitive pool in Ontario and we hope to see more in the future.
1st Jason Klatt $3500
2nd John Morra $1900
3rd Tyler Styer $1200
4th Mario Morra $700
5th Andy Aupin $500
Erik Hjorleifson
7th Tim Bristow $350
Jeet Khandai
9th Alain Lessard $300
Stefane Godhino
Louis Fazekas
Top Amateur prize Tim Bistow and Stefane Godhino $250 each
Player Auction total $15, 200
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