Thomas Haas (Courtesy Cue The Moment)
Thomas Haas, who’ll be 23 on the 4th of July, picked up his first regional tour title and recorded his best earnings year in 2023. He is ‘on schedule’ to make 2024 his best year and has already recorded his second regional tour victory, going undefeated this past weekend (April 6-7) through a ‘star-studded,’ mid-Atlantic field of competitors, including his Dad, Scott (whom he did not meet in competition), and Shaun Wilkie, whom he defeated twice. The occasion was On the Hill Productions’ Maryland State 9-Ball Championships, which drew 67 entrants to Brews & Cues on the Boulevard in Glen Burnie, MD.
It was quite a diversified field, featuring junior competitors and just-out-of-junior competitors like Dylan Spohr (who would finish third), Nathan Childress, Garrett Vaughan, and Niko Konkel. There were wily veterans like Wilkie, Brett Stottlemyer, Matt Krah, Steve Fleming, Brandon Shuff and Paul (Sang) Oh, as well as female competitors like Judie Wilson from the JPNEWT and junior competitor Skylar Hess.
Haas faced four of those 12, opening with a 7-3 win over Steve Bell and following that with a 7-1 victory over Freddy Scott. He then got by Steve Fleming 7-4 and Nathan Childress 7-5, before stepping into a winners’ side semifinal versus Wilkie, who along his winners’ side path to the finals, allowed only seven racks-against in his first four matches versus Roberto Hervias Alvarado (0), Eric Brobst (1), Brandon Shuff (3) and Coen Bell (3). Dylan Spohr, destined for the hot seat match, faced two of the 12. He got by Bobby Pacheco (3), Mike (Mhmoud) Saleh (2), Bryan Jones (4) and in a double-hill battle, Brett Stottlemyer, before shutting out Matt Douglas to draw Matt Krah in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Haas gave up only one to Wilkie in their first match, as Spohr was busy sending Krah to the loss side 7-5. Haas may have been able to watch his father play his loss-side match against Wilkie, after which Thomas claimed the hot seat over Spohr 7-5.
On the loss side, Scott Haas, who’d lost his opening match to Nathan Childress, was working on a loss-side winning streak that could have put him into the finals against his son. He’d gotten by a few of the aforementioned ‘wily veterans,’ like Brandon Shuff 6-4 and just ahead of drawing Wilkie, Steve Fleming 6-1. So, it was eight down and three to go for a father/son final. Krah, in the meantime, drew Stottlemyer, who was working on his own five-match, loss-side streak which had recently eliminated Coen Bell and Nathan Childress, both 6-2.
Wilkie spoiled the father/son final with a 6-2 win over Scott and advanced to the quarterfinals. He was joined by Stottlemyer, who’d eliminated Krah 6-3. Wilkie put a stop to Stottlemyer’s streak with a 6-3 win in those quarterfinals. Wilkie earned his second shot against Thomas Haas with a 6-2 win over Dylan Spohr in the semifinals.
It’s hard to know whether filial considerations (“of or due from a son”) entered into Thomas’ mind as he set up to do battle to the man who’d defeated his Dad. Probably not. Father and son have been around the game long enough not to allow such considerations to interfere with the task at hand, that old ‘one ball, one game, one match, one tournament at a time’ set of considerations that keep a pool player focused. We do know that Thomas Haas defeated Wilkie a second time, 7-5 in the finals to claim the MD State 9-Ball Championship title and that both he and his Dad left with enough combined cash to have themselves one hell of any kind of post-event party they may have had in mind.
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