Tri-State Tour / Parsippany, NJ
by Lea Andrews
After a grueling day of play, a 31-player field was whittled down to two men who agreed to skip the final set. Mike Aro and Joe Fego split first- and second-place money at the $500-added B-D Tri-State Tour event June 13, hosted by Comet Billiards in Parsippany, NJ.
Aro and Fego went as far as they could go in the winners’ bracket before first meeting up —they played the match for the hot seat, Aro having sent Allen Wong west with a score of 7-5, and Fego having done the same to Teddy Lubis 8-6.
On the one-loss side, Emily Duddy was making a splash, taking down Ben Sadowski 7-3 and Mike Crispino 7-2 before she and Gary Murgia, who’d just put Dave Shlemperis in seventh with a score of 7-4, met up with Wong and Lubis. Duddy was on a roll and she put Wong in fifth with a score of 7-4, while Murgia fell to Lubis 7-5. Lubis, always a very tough competitor in the Tri-State events, was another notch in Duddy’s belt on that day, and he finished in fourth with a score of 7-5.
The one-loss side semi-final would be a different story for Duddy, though. The hot seat match had seen Fego fall to Aro 7-2, and Fego was fighting to get back to where he’d been all day: the winners’ side. Duddy was in his way, but not for long, and he put her in third with a score of 7-4.
Fego was back on the winners’ side, where normally a single-race final set would decide first and second. Not this time, though—the exhausted men opted to split, saving their rematch for perhaps the next event.
After a grueling day of play, a 31-player field was whittled down to two men who agreed to skip the final set.
Results:
1st Mike Aro $430
Joe Fego $430
3rd Emily Duddy $240
4th Teddy Lubis $140
5th Allen Wong $65
Gary Murgia