3rd Place: WPBA Pacific Coast Classic - Oct '09

October 19, 2009:  I arrived early from an exhibition on the West Coast and had the chance to enjoy Portland for a day before getting to work!  For the past several years I have helped out with pre tournament press and alongside Kelly Fisher made a very early morning trip out in Portland to a local store to have fun with a local TV presenter and promote the event.

As always I love the event in Lincoln City, Oregon.  It reminds me of Peacehaven, England where I grew up. The Riverwind Casino is a wonderful host site and takes good care of us.  We always have a good turn out as the APA host a local amateur event in the casino side by side.

This year the weather was quite mild and very pleasant.  I had a good tournament and ended up in the televised rounds again.  I stayed in the winner’s bracket and met Ga Young Kim, the number one ranked player, who had suffered an earlier loss.  I like playing Ga Young as she is aggressive and determined.  It fired me up and I felt the same way. I played pretty well and she missed a couple of good opportunities.  I won with a beautiful shot whereby I made the corner ball and let the cue ball travel down table to carom the 9 ball in for the victory. 

I played Jasmin Ouschan of Austria in the first semi-final match.  I last played her at the World Games for the Gold medal. She played a solid match and ended up beating me 7-4. I wasn’t really pleased with my performance. In the first game I made a bad choice, ended up short on a shot and missed the 7 ball. That particular shot did not cost me the game but against top players I cannot afford to make erratic mistakes. I missed a shot in the side pocket to get within a game and basically sold out the match.

Jasmin played well and won the event beating Xiaoting Pan of China in the final.