Hosted by the Auckland Pool Assn and held at the ACBS Clubroom : 08-09 May 2010

Report by Malcolm Beehre :

Women’s Event:  Molrudee Vujanic top-qualified with three wins and a +11 aggregte, and played Aimee Black in one of the Semi-finals.  Black put up a good fight and could have won the match but for a couple of unlikely fouls.  The final score of this match was 6/3 to Vujanic.  The other Semi between Denise Wilkinson and Lorna Frost was a one-sided match with Wilkinson winning 6/0. 

The Final between Vujanic and Wilkinson was another one-sided match with Wilkinson running away with a 7/2 win and another 8-Ball title.

Men’s Event : With 16 qualifiers out of a field of 21 with most of the qualifiers being the ones you would expect to qualify.  Joe and Leighton Pologa caused a couple of upsets, in as much as they hadn’t played in any ranking tournaments in the last couple of years and weren’t ranked.
Maher Hatab was one surprise non-qualifier; he ended up in a play-off situation for the number 16 spot, with new-comer to World Pool Rules, David Tauhore.  Tauhore won the match 2/0, he started off all at sea in his first tournament but finished strongly with good wins over Ryan Luo and Leighton Pologa.
The first round of section play was certainly a mixed bag with two matches being over in 30 minutes, both 6/0 wins.  The longest match was between Marvin Padrigo and Steven Liu, taking 1 hour and 40 minutes with Padrigo winning 6/4.  Liu looked like he was making it at the 5-all stage but in the 10th frame, after potting all of his balls in one visit, potted the black but went in off it.
Down to the Quarter-finals and race to seven matches.  Two old rivals, Jimmy Henry and Glen Coutts met with Henry winning 7/4 and Coutts commenting “it’s the best he’s seen Henry play in the last couple of years”.  Chris Bowman and Nick Pera had a great match.  Bowman got out to a 6/4 lead, determined to put aside toughts of the last time he played Pera, which was a 10-nil whitewash in 9-Ball.  He managed to do that and took the match 7/5.  Jon Grimley beat Joe Pologa 7/5 and in the other Quarter-final between Padrigo and Matt Edwards, Edwards seemed resigned to a long match and Padrigo went out to a 4/1 lead.  Edwards then fought back to 6/4 in front, but missed an easy black to win 7/4; he then missed another easy shot in the 13th frame and eventually went down 7/6.
Grimley easily defeated Bowman 7/2 in their Semi-final match and Henry also easily defeated Padrigo 7/3 in their Semi-final match.
The Final was a real mixture of play with soft breaks, delicate spates of safety shots and a lot of tactical shots rather than an all out potting match.  Henry was 5/4 up, then missed an easy straight black allowing Grimley to even up at 5-all, however Henry had a good 7-ball clearance in the next frame to stay one frame ahead.  Grimley missed a relatively easy shot in the next and it was looking like the finish, but Henry potted a ball and went in off, leaving an easy last two shots for Grimley and the score was 6-all.  Grimley won a scrappy last fame to take the North Island Men’s 8-Ball title 7/6.

Men’s Last 16 :  M Edwards bt D Tauhore 6/3, M Padrigo bt S Liu 6/4, G Coutts bt L Pologa 6/4, J Henry bt J Walker 6/2, C Bowman bt J Cook 6/5, N Pera bt P Hutchings 6/0, J Pologa bt N Yang 6/4, J Grimley bt D Breen 6/0.
Men’s Quarter-finals : M Padrigo bt M Edwards 7/6, J Henry bt G Coutts 7/4, C Bowman bt N Pera 7/5, J Grimley bt J Pologa
Men’s Semi-finals : J Henry bt M Padrigo 7/3, J Grimley bt C Bowman 7/2.
Men’s Final : J Grimley bt J Henry 7/6

Women’s Semi-finals : M Vujanic bt A Black 6/3, D Wilkinson bt L Frost 6/0.
Women’s Final : D Wilkinson bt M Vujanic

Individual player profiles have been updated.