The club recently held its first quarterly competition, an annual nine-ball tournament. Congratulations to the tournament champ, Debbie Radicchi! Debbie played smart and made many lovely shots, winning six of her seven matches. She also made several spot shots, winning crucial tiebreak shootouts.
Debbie lost only to Al Sable, who also had an outstanding performance. Al stormed through the winners’ bracket undefeated, and Al and Debbie should have played in the finals. Unfortunately, Al had to leave, so he took second place honors.
Third place went to Ray Talkington, perhaps the event’s most disciplined and careful player. Ray showed that a careful pre-shot routine and a thoughtful game approach can pay dividends.
Fourth place went to Dean Burden, who thanked me for advising players to practice their spot shots last week. That’s exactly what he did, and he said he won several matches because of it. This is a great takeaway for future events since a sizable percentage of the matches were decided by who could make a spot shot.
Paul Stoecklin and Rick Casey tied for fifth place, and Robin Greene and Art Keck tied for seventh place. With 42 competitors, finishing in the top eight was a terrific achievement.
Congratulations to all our top finishers and, incredibly, those few above who are basic players who have never finished highly in an event before. This results from a commonly used handicap system that levels the playing field.
As these results clearly show, anyone in the event can earn a spot with the top finishers. This was evident from the fact that higher rated players giving up a handicap made up one quarter of the tournament field, and exactly one quarter of those players made it into the top eight. That’s as evenhanded as a handicap system gets.
The stronger players often think they’re “supposed” to win, but that’s neither right nor fair. In my view, all players should have an equal chance to win, and the top finishers are those who dig down and perform well on that day.
With this in mind, I offer special congratulations to Robin Greene, Dean Burden, Rick Casey, and Al Sable, who showed uncommon grit and determination in surpassing their limits and expectations. Very, very well done!
