2007/08 SAPPA TOUR
SAPPA Tour Event 2
Riley's Inverness
6 May 2007
The May Bank Holiday weekend took the SAPPA Tour back to Inverness to one of the newest Riley's clubs in Scotland with a total of 42 players making the (for some) long journey north to play in one of the more enjoyable tournaments on the SAPPA Tour.
For some, however, the weekend started off on the Saturday evening when 22 players turned up to play in SAPPA's first ever Straight Pool tournament. Straight Pool is considered to be the purest test of a pool player's overall ability and after a short run-down of the rules, play began. It was not long before the high runs started being recorded with Arbroath's Davy Jack excellent run of 33 balls in his first match. However, this was not to last the rest of the tournament as Pat Holtz made a brilliant run of 42 balls to take the £20 High Run prize. Holtz also took first place, along with the £100 first prize after beating Glasgow's Stevie Capaldi 75 balls to 38 in the final. Capaldi was awarded £50 for his efforts with Greg Alexander and Frank Hughes taking the £25 prizes for the losing Semi-Finalists.
Sunday saw all attention being put back to 9-Ball for the second SAPPA Tour event of the season. This turned out to be a tournament of breakthrough performances for a couple of players. Edinburgh's Cameron Bowes reached his first Quarter Final after losing his first match of the day to Glasgow's Darren Murray only to fight his way through the nightmare of the Losers' Bracket to make it through to the Single Elimination last 16 where his progress was halted in the last 8 by Clark Smith by 8 racks to 4. The other stand out performance was that of 15-year-old Ross Simpson. The Cumbernauld wonderkid has been showing potential since he joined the tour just under 2 years ago but in Inverness he really shone through in reaching the Semi Finals with wins over Stevie Capaldi in the last 16 and Billy Edmond in the Quarter Finals with back-to-back 8-5 scorelines. Ross' progress, however, came to a shuddering hault with an 8-2 loss to Pat Holtz in the Semi Final. The other Semi Final was a repeat of the final in Glasgow with Michael Valentine playing Clark Smith. Both were undefeated going into this match and, unfortunately for Smith, it was to be a repeat outcome of the Glasgow final as he narrowly lost out to Valentine by 8 racks to 7.
This meant that the final would be between the players ranked numbers one and 2 on the SAPPA Ranking List, Pat Holtz and Michael Valentine. It was a fairly tight affair until 3-3 when Holtz put a run of 4 racks together to open up a lead that, in the end, could not be overcome. In the end, it was Holtz who came away with the victory and the £300 prize money with a 9 racks to 5 scoreline.
1st |
Pat
Holtz |
£300 |
310
points |
2nd |
Michael
Valentine |
£150 |
225
points |
3rd |
Ross
Simpson |
£75 |
165
points |
3rd |
Clark
Smith |
£75 |
165
points |
5th |
Davy
Jack |
£40 |
120
points |
5th |
Cameron
Bowes |
£40 |
120
points |
5th |
Billy
Edmond |
£40 |
120
points |
5th |
Greg
Alexander |
£40 |
120
points |
9th |
Chris
Fraser |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Stuart
McPhee |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Andy
Morris |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Ian
Mitchell |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Stevie
Capaldi |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Pawel
Ostrowski |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Darren
Murray |
£20 |
85
points |
9th |
Jim
Smith |
£20 |
85
points |
You can download the Inverness Tour Event Tournament Chart as a PDF file by clicking this link
Back to 2007/08 Tour Archive
