Held at the ACBS Clubrooms : 17-18 April 2010

The inaugural NZ Open 10-Ball tournament went very well with most players adapting to the little differences in the rules as opposed to 8 and 9-Ball.  Everyone also adapted well to the new stencils used for setting up the balls and they certainly do speed up the time it takes to do this.

The painting of the outside wall made a big difference to the temperture of the room and made for much better playing conditions all round. 

Unfortunately there were only 3 women’s entries and it was decided to include them in the men’s field and this allowed them to also play in the Plate event.

Suprisingly, Molrudee Vunjanic struggled all day, missing a lot of easy shots and failed to qualify for Post-section play.

Aimee Black and Cherie Hobbs both won a match and acquitted themselves well in spite of the tough opposition they both faced.

Top qualifier in Section 1 was Glen Coutts, followed by Marvin Padrigo, Matt Edwards and fourth position went to Kevin Zhang who had the same number of wins as Greg Croudis but had a +15 differential against Croudis’ all square one.

Section 2 had two players with eight wins – Timothy Putu and Steven Liu.  Putu was first with +27 as opposed to Liu’s +18.  Third was Chris Bowman and fourth was Jon Grimley on a differential count back with Steven Qi.  At this stage the average game was about seven minutes.

The upsets started in the first round of Post-section play with the two top seeds being beaten by the two section fourths.  Zhang beat Putu 7/3 and Grimley beat Coutts 7/2.  Edwards beat Liu 7/6 taking 1 1/4 hours (average 6mins/frame) and Bowman overcame Padrigo 7/5 in 1 hour 35 minutes (approximately 8 mins/frame).

Edwards beat Grimley 7/6 in one Semi-final and Zhang gave Bowman no chance in the other, winning 7/1.

The Final between Edwards and Zhang was always going to be fast with both players always trying to clear in one shot.  Edwards added this Title to his win at the 9-Ball two weeks ago, beating Zhang 9/7.

Quarter-finals : J Grimley bt G Coutts 7/2, M Edwards bt S Liu 7/6, C Bowman bt M Padrigo 7/5, K Zhang bt T Putu 7/3.

Semi-finals : M Edwards bt J Grimley 7/6, K Zhang bt C Bowman 7/1.

Final : M Edwards bt K Zhang 9/7.