Final Eight to Return Sunday at Turning Stone Classic IX
by InsidePOOL Staff
The top eight players remaining at the Turning Stone Classic IX will return Sunday to see who the best of the best is. There will be four players each in the winners’-side bracket and the one-loss side.
Mike Davis’s run was ended by Tony “The Silent Assassin” Robles, who defeated him 9-5. Before that, Davis had a spectacular match against the explosive Shane Van Boening. Up 8-4, Davis missed a combo, and Van Boening took advantage to bring it to a hill-hill score. Davis, however, recovered the table and won 9-8.
The rest of the final matches Saturday in the one-loss side were fairly lopsided. Ronnie Wiseman easily won his match against Eddie Abraham 9-3, only to face Germany’s Ralf Souquet in the next round, who handed Wiseman a 9-2 dusting. Souquet and Robles will match up Sunday.
Dutchman Niels Feijen, recently crowned Champion of Champions at the International Challenge of Champions last week, continues to destroy his opponents in the one-loss side. A narrow 9-7 victory over former world champion Thorsten Hohmann, and then Feijen eliminated Jimmy Jusman with a whopping 9-3 score.
Feijen’s opponent Sunday will be Mika “Iceman” Immonen, who has also survived some tough matches today. After ousting Tony “T-Rex” Chohan, Immonen went on to eliminate Steve Moore of Atlanta 9-2.
Louis Ulrich, also in Atlanta now, eked out a double-hill win over Allen Hopkins to face Shane Van Boening and send him to the west side 9-4. Then he advanced to deal Moore his first loss of the event, also 9-4.
Meeting Ulrich in one of the winners’-side matches is Karen Corr. Ranked number two on the WPBA, Corr has had a stellar event so far. She dealt a stunning 9-2 defeat to Carmen Lombardo, only to survive a close match with Jimmy Jusman, in which she won 9-7.
The other winners’-side match will be an all-Filipino match-up between Lee Van Corteza and Dennis Orcollo. Van Corteza, who was runner-up at the International Challenge of Champions to Feijen, bested Chohan 9-3 and then Tony Robles 9-2 in his final two rounds of the evening. Orcollo didn’t have it any easier, facing down Dave Grau 9-7 and then going on to send Ralf Souquet to the west side 9-3.
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Photographer Mitch Heydt is providing an image gallery from the event. View the Turning Stone Classic IX image gallery (/gallery2/v/Pool+Tournaments/Joss_Tour/).