KC Open Pro Report: Challenging Selection

Player Report by Dylan Goodwin

The 2019 Kansas City Open offered a tough selection challenge for the Pro Division with two blocks of four only advancing one player each to the championship. The format came about with the available court space at Kactus Creek limited to one court.

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The two blocks squared off Saturday morning and Matt Griffith emerged from Group A with a 3-0 record, but did get close games from Greg Adams and Ron Millican. In my block, I dropped my opener to Deborah Millican 12-9, but bounced back against Greg Clouse 26-5. That gave Millican an opportunity to secure the championship berth with a win in the final block round as she squared off against Clouse. Unfortunately, she fell in that game 17-10 and that created a three-way tie. Based on gross points, I took the tiebreader by six points to get the spot against Griffith.

We both seemed to struggle to put together a decisive opening run despite good opportunities and it shifted to a bit of a deadness battle. I did put together a decent run with yellow, but missed a roquet on my 4BB break after H10 due to running the hoop a bit long. Griffith battle back, but did get both of his balls partner dead. I got back in needed to knock black off of his easy hoop shot to get clean at H5. I accidentally peeled him through the hoop, so basically left it with red in the northeast sector with blue near H13. I put yellow out on the south boundary. Blue shot for red and was on the north boundary. Instead of roqueting and destroying black, I opted to put red near corner 1.

Griffith picked up the boundary ball and tried the roll-up to H6 just west of corner 3. He came up just a bit wide and the hoop attempt failed and I escaped with an 18-15 win.

The KC Open has been my favorite 9WS event since it was launched and with the slightly wider court and side wickets in eight feet from the boundaries it offered an increased degree of challenge from prior years. Notably, running a three ball break meant much wider split shots to get your pioneer set.