The St Albans Hurricane Room
Unit 8 Verulam Industrial Estate
224 London Road
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL1 1JF
www.hurricaneroom.co.uk
www.t9b.co.uk - Live scoring
Saturday 17 November 2012
Mark Parker celebrates his victory with girlfriend Kim at the T9B event in St Albans.
Parker Triumphs as favourites are toppled
Mark Parker achieved his best Total9ball result to date by winning the final qualifying event for the Amateur 2X Series held at St Albans.
There was another very strong field in attendance with players such as Courtney Symons, Gary Bullocke, Micheal Rhodes and Ramesh Gokhul all hoping to take home the beautiful glass trophy and score last minute ranking points towards the Grand Finals to be held on 1st December.
Matches began at around 10.30 at the Hurricane Room with the first round producing a few unexpected results... Jonathan Vaughan from Neath achieved a fantastic 7v1 against one of the UK's top amateur players Michael Rhodes, Gareth Esprit defeated Ramesh Gokhul 7v6 and Lionel Brown beat in-form Wayne Rooke. Mark Parker began his tournament with mixed fortunes, a 7-6 victory against Phil Wildman in one half or the draw but unfortunately was on the wrong side of a 7v4 scoreline in the other half.
Round Two saw Lionel Brown produce another good performance with a 7v4 win against off the table friend Gareth Esprit to line up a match with Mark Parker as Mark defeated Dave McCarthy 7v5 on the table next door. Gary Bullocke, a pre tournament favourite and overall ranking leader, won 7v4 over Mark Hughes and looked fresh as a daisy as he stayed the night in the car park of the club... Don't worry he was in his mobile home. Other results in this round included a great 7v5 win for Shakz Islam over Jonathan Vaughan, Ramesh Gokhul and new player John Egan both converted 7v5 wins against Wayne Rooke and Mark Hughes respectively.
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The elegant selection of Total 9 Ball trophies awarded to the winners of
each event have created some intense competition among the players.
With all results in from round two this is how the Quarter Final Line Up looked with results.
Lionel Brown 5
Mark Parker 7
Gary Bullocke 7
Shakz Islam 2
Ramesh Gokhul 5
Phil Wildman 7
Courtney Symons 7
John Egan 2
Mark Parker continued with a mix of top safety play and confident potting against Lionel Brown. Gary Bullocke ended Shakz dream of being a T9B Champion but this was Shakz best finish in a comp to date so well done to him, Wildman finally got a win over Gokhul after losing the last 3 times they have played and Symons seemed to moving up through the gears as he won convincingly against John Egan. Interesting that since T9B designed the 2x tournament format this was the first event where the Quarter Final line up had 8 different players.
The Semi Final saw a great comeback from Mark Parker, he trailed 5v0 to Gary Bullocke before battling back to win 7v5, while on the other table Courtney Symons steam-rolled Phil Wildman 7v3.
So it was Mark Parker vs Courtney Symons in the Final, Courtney seemingly in top form after achieving wins at T9B and GB9 events in the past few months would go into the game as favourite but could he stop Parker from his first T9B title? The answer was no, as Mark Parker looked calm around the table and took a 3v1 lead, Courtney struggled to catch Parker as they shared racks, Parker though, won a scrappy rack to clinch the title.
A massive well done to Mark Parker on his first T9B tournament victory - a great achievement and it goes to show that the lower handicap players can win events. Also congratulations to Gary Bullocke who won the overall rankings for the season by 1 point from second placed Ramesh Gokhul and the 16 players listed below who have been invited to the Grand Finals
1 Gary Bullocke
2 Ramesh Gokhul
3 Courtney Symons
4 Phil Wildman
5 Mark Parker
6 Wayne Rooke
7 Luke Rollison
8 Mark Hughes
9 Shakz Islam
10 Jonathan Vaughan
11 Chris Buckmaster
12 Gareth Esprit
13 Mikko Tuomi
14 Dave Mccarthy
15 Tom Staveley
16 Paul Taylor
St Albans Hurricane Room again player great hosts and we can't wait to return for the Grand Finals on 1st December, If any players from the list above can't attend the Grand Finals please let me know asap as there will be a qualifier held at St Albans on the morning of the Grand Final.
Courtney Symons
Phil Wildman
Wayne Rooke
Darren Saxby
Mark Parker
Shakz Islam
Ramesh Gokhul
Gary Bullocke and Shakz Islam
John Egan
Courtney Symons and Mark Parker shake hands before the final match.
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