Wayne Hill, Robert West and Jimmy Faircloth
Over the past six months or so, we’ve been reporting steadily on the growth and proliferation of what are known as ‘split bracket’ events on regional tours and independent tournaments. In all of that reporting, you may have noticed that when tournament directors split fields into ‘High’ and ‘Low’ brackets, based on player ratings, the ‘Low’ side brackets tend to draw the larger number of entrants. Though we suspect that it’s true in general, we don’t know that it is, because we don’t (can’t) cover every tournament on American soil from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
Along with the ‘split bracket’ events which organize two separate tournaments, one for each bracket, with occasional, small ‘final’ brackets that combine the finalists in both brackets. Then, there are times when tours and independent events create just a single bracket for one or the other (high or low) skill levels. And here again, anecdotally, the Low bracket tournaments tend to draw the largest fields.
The ‘numbers’ seem to suggest substantial growth among competitors who are one-step-above their counterparts in the Amateur League(s), like the APA, BCA, VNEA, and NAPL. And likely to have emerged from at least one of them. This new ‘range’ of competitors has entered the field of competitive play a little spoiled from their experience with the amateur leagues, which handicaps matches, affording them ‘beads on the wire’ against higher-ranked players. They come out of these leagues hoping for the same sort of ‘leg up,’ but as this past weekend’s (March 1-2) stop on the TOP (The Open Player) Tour demonstrates, they seem to prefer playing against competitors at their own level in Open events; no ‘beads on the wire’ for anybody, but with everybody, more or less, at the same skill level.
The $500-added TOP Tour event drew 51 entrants to its ‘7 and under’ tournament at Dot’s Cue Club in Rocky Mount, NC. The TOP Tour (and others) uses its own ranking system, based, in part, but not exclusively on the FargoRate system. Tour director Herman Parker has been operating his Q City 9-Ball Tour in the Mid-Atlantic/South region for over a decade (his TOP Tour has been running for the last couple of years) and has been observing the different ways that any ranking system, whether it be amateur leagues, regional tours or independent events, can be manipulated by players who ‘game the system’ to their advantage. Players have been known to deliberately play below their actual skill level over a period of time in order to reduce a given system’s assessment of that skill level. When that skill level does go down, these players suddenly show up at a tournament and are assigned more ‘beads on the wire’ in matches than they actually deserve, giving them the aforementioned ‘leg up’ in matches against actually lower skill-level competitors. Parker has ‘eyes-on’ experience with many of the players who compete on his tour(s) and prefers to ‘handicap’ them on the basis of his own personal experience and observations of their skill levels, based on competitive efforts elsewhere.
“Everybody (on this TOP Tour stop) felt like they had a chance,” said Parker.
Going undefeated to claim this past weekend’s ‘7 and under,’ TOP Tour title was a 70+-year-old competitor by the name of Jimmy Faircloth, who brought home in this one event, only $35 less than the total amount of (reported-to-us) cash at the tables in five events between 1999 and 2007, which was the last year, prior to this weekend, that he recorded (with us) any cash winnings at all. So, of course, two months and less than a week into this year, Faircloth has recorded his first event victory and it is already his best recorded earnings year.
Faircloth’s opponent in the hot seat match and finals, Wayne Hill, joined our database for the first time this weekend. He earned more as runner-up in this one event than Faircloth brought home in his first three entries; one each in ’99, ’04 and ’05. So, like Faircloth, only two months and a day or two into 2025 and it is already Hill’s best recorded earnings year.
‘Proof’s in the pudding,’ they say. The TOP Tour’s ‘7 and under’ event not only drew a respectable number of entrants, but its winner and runner-up were two relatively unknown competitors at the (more or less) same just-above-amateur-league skill levels. Ergo, the population of regional tour competitors with skill levels either at or above amateur league levels has grown considerably over the past four or five years and players seem to prefer playing in Open tournaments, as long as they can be assured that their competition is at or close to their own skill level.
Faircloth played and won six matches against five opponents, going double hill twice, 6-3 three times and 6-2 once. He faced Robbie Crosby in a winners’ side semifinal. Hill, in the meantime, played eight matches against seven opponents. He lost his one double-hill match, and shut out two opponents. He won three matches 6-2, before winning a match 6-3 and then losing one by that score. Hill squared off against Robert West in the other winners’ side semifinal.
A pair of 6-2 wins put Faircloth and Hill into the hot seat match; Faircloth over Crosby, Hill over West. Faircloth claimed the hot seat in what was his second double-hill win.
On the loss side, Crosby came over and picked up Mickey Hall, who’d lost a second-round match to Jimmy Bird (6-2) and won six straight, including, most recently, a 6-3 win over Dustin Wiley and a re-match, 6-4 victory over Bird. West drew a rematch against Jerry Cannon, whom he’d defeated, double hill, in the second winners’ side round. Cannon won four in a row, including a 6-1 victory over Damon Kotke and a double-hill win over Dylan Lee, which led to his rematch against West.
West ended Cannon’s loss-side run with a second win against him, 6-4, as Hall eliminated Crosby 6-3. West defeated Hall 6-2 in the quarterfinals that followed, only to have his own, short loss-side run ended by Hill in the semifinals 6-3.
The double-hill hot seat match may have whetted tournament appetites for a double-hill final, possibly two of them. It did not turn out that way. There was (according to digitalpool time stamps) an hour and a half between the conclusion of that hot seat match and the conclusion of the semifinals which apparently accrued to the benefit of Faircloth. He won the opening, and what proved to be only set of the final against Hill 6-3 to claim the TOP Tour title.
TD Parker thanked the ownership and staff at Dot’s Cue Club for their hospitality, along with sponsors BarPoolTables.net, Break Time (Clemmons), TKO Custom Cues, Realty Group One Results, CHC Undeground, Digitalpool.com, Dirty South Grind Apparel, Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division and AZBilliards.
Information about the next stop(s) on the Q City 9-Ball Tour and/or the TOP Tour, not available as we were preparing this report, will be disseminated on the tour’s Facebook page, when it is.
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