Jayson Shaw
Day one of the Turning Stone Classic XXXVIII is complete, with very little in the form of major upsets.
Early in day one, defending champion Fedor Gorst and nine time champion Jayson Shaw both scored one sided first round wins. Gorst beat Ranulf Tamba 9-2, while Shaw defeated Frank Wolak 9-0. The entire Gorst family had good first rounds with girlfriend Kristina Tkach over Dave Mills 9-2 and Tkach’s father Oleg beating Eddie Culhane 9-4.
Other first round winners included nine time Turning Stone champion Johnny Archer and one time Turning Stone champion Rodney Morris. Morris announced prior to the beginning of the event that he was pledging all proceeds from tournament sales of his Rockey Science instructional DVD, as well as a percentage of prize money to helping Mika Immonen with his expenses incurred in his fight with cancer. “He’s by brother. We all have to do what we can do” said Morris. Morris also has a custom ostrich skin Whitten Case that he will be using to raise money for Immonen at this event.
One early round “upset” was Canadian Tom Cayer’s 9-7 win over Hunter Lombardo. Cayer is part of the large contingent of Canadian players who frequent Turning Stone and while his friends say Cayer probably considers his win a big upset, they all agreed that it was a much smaller upset than Cayer will admit.
The final round of play saw the biggest upset of the day with Turning Stone first timer Brendan Ince sending Donny Mills to the one loss side 9-7.
Day two matches include Shaw vs Thorsten Hohmann, Erik Hjorleifson vs Ukraine’s Vitaliy Patsura and a Canadian battle between Joey Cicero and Danny Hewitt.
Fans who can’t make it to Turning Stone can follow the online brackets and real time scoring from the event. Upstate Al and Digital Pool are streaming the tables from the event, with the feature table available for free on Upstate Al’s Facebook Page.
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