Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The Closer

Whew! Playoffs started for our league last night, win or go home. Luckily, our team managed to pull out two victories to stay alive for next week and we're in the final four. Our two matches had some eerie similarities though. Player A, our highest ranked player, lost his match quickly. Player B would let his opponent get on the hill, before reeling off three straight games to take the match. And Player C won her matches quite handily. So that left me to close things out. Win my game and our team wins 3-1, lose my game and it's headed to a tiebreaker. I ended up winning both of my matches. The first one was 5-1 and I felt in control most of the match.


In my second match, I fell behind 2-0 early after pocketing the 8 ball early and a nice run by my opponent. But I came back with 5 straight to take it. The table was horrible though, with a slight roll affecting any slow shots. In one of the first racks, I tried a table length cut shot and the cue ball veered off missing my object ball altogether. My opponent had a table length shot on the 8 ball a few games later and did the same thing. Eventually, I got to a point where I just stopped aiming those shots and just tried to get a hit. It dragged the game on for a bit and we didn't finish up until just before 2 am.


Anyway, here was the clinching run for my first match. I was on stripes with ball in hand. I was quite proud of how I handled it because I have been working on controlling my draw stroke, especially for these shorter shots.


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