Lives of the legends playing out in one of their homes away from home. The cue ball jumped up onto the rail, travelled all the way down table, jumping over the side pocket and then went back on the table, giving me a straight shot at the 4-ball.” “I hit this shot,” said Shaw at one point, “that went into the hole and bounced out. against Billy Thorpe), joined the throng gathered around him and it took about two seconds for them to launch into a discussion about the tables and how they ‘played’ in a given match. Jayson Shaw, still on the winners’ side of the bracket, looking to advance to the final 16 today, as well (2:30 p.m. He embellished on that central joke for a while before moving on to chat with spectators who’d obviously been paying strict attention to his match as it played out questions and comments about shot situations and potential solutions, back and forth. Standing for one shot with a broad grin on his face, he said that the woman to his left was prettier than he was, riffing on this to talk about his sagging limbs and a “face that looked like a truck hit me and then backed up.” Manifestly not true, but it got a laugh. They were lined up two or three deep around him, cameras at the ready, as he gave them a genteel comedian to play with. The first round of that phase will play out at 6 p.m.Įarl was among those looking to see what was coming up next, and he took the opportunity to play to the audience that had been relatively quiet during his win over Gomez. Earl was scheduled to play Bart Czapla at noon, in a match that will determine whether he advances to the 16-player, single elimination phase of the event. Very quietly and not for long.Įarl finished off Gomez, quickly, only giving up one more rack and moved to the lobby outside the arena where folks gathered around the hand-written brackets to see who was coming up against who in today’s (Saturday) matches. Gomez managed to chalk up three racks and the remaining crowd went wild. Those who remained were switching their attention between what was left of Earl’s match and what was going on at the tables on either side of him (Shannelle Lorraine and Ada Lio were playing south of him, while Jesus Atencio and Mason Koch were battling it out north of him). People (though not many) started leaving, like baseball fans leaving a stadium when the score is 12-0 in the seventh inning, wanting to get ahead of the traffic jam. Instead, they got the professional ‘Earl’s here to win’ show, full of rock-solid shooting that saw him take control of a 2-2 match and win six in a row before some of the audience had even settled in. While there were certainly people in the crowd of some 200 or so spectators who were itching to see a show not a pool show necessarily, but an Earl show, as only he can bring it. This was weekend-is-here Earl the Pearl time. Modest crowds, dotting the three-level risers to either side of the 16 tables, laid end to end, side by side.įriday night, though, was different. On Thursday, after a bye, he’d lost his opening match, double hill, to Alan Rolon Rosada and at 11:30 a.m. On Friday night at 9:30, Earl Strickland stepped to the tables of the Super Billiards Expo’s arena in search of his second win in the Diamond Open 9-Ball Professional Players Championship. Fishers still alive in the WPBA 9-Ball Pro Players Championship.
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