Bernie Pettipiece and Scott Frost
The Desert Classic Tour held their Arizona State One Pocket Championship at Kolby’s (where else?) with a field of twenty nine players on August 18-19. As could have been predicted before play began, the tournament quickly became a field of twenty eight players trying to beat Scott Frost.
Frost was one of the four players to remain undefeated on Saturday, along with Bobby Emmons, Gus Briseno and Mitch Ellerman. The biggest difference in the four players was that Frost not only won every match he played on Saturday; he won every game.
The unthinkable happened when play resumed on Sunday and Bobby Emmons was finally able to win a game against Frost. Unfortunately for Emmons, the match was a race to three and Frost would win the match 3-1. In the other winners side match, Gus Briseno sent Mitch Ellerman to the left side of the board with a 3-1 scoreline.
On the one loss side, Bernie Pettipiece eliminated Dennis Orender 3-0 and Mike Pankoff ended Eric Young’s event with a 3-1 score. Orender and Young earned free entry into a DCT event of their choice.
Usually at the 5th/6th place part of a tournament, the players coming over from the winners side have an advantage over their opponents who are already on the one loss side. That was not the case in this event as Pettipiece went on to eliminate Emmons 3-1 and Pankoff defeated Ellerman 3-2. Emmons and Ellerman took home $100 in prize money for their 5th place finishes.
Next up on the one loss side was Bernie Pettipiece vs Mike Pankoff and Pettipiece continued his winning ways with a 3-1 win, forcing Pankoff to settle for $150 in 4th place prize money.
The match for the hot-seat saw Frost taking on Briseno and Frost got right back to his dominating ways in winning the match 3-0 and sending Briseno to take his chances against Pettipiece on the left side of the board.
Briseno came out and took charge of the semi-final match as he won the first two games and looked well on his way to a rematch with Frost. Pettipiece has been down 2-0 before though, and he was unphased as he came back to tie the match at 2-2. Briseno had the break in the final game and made a ball on the break, but was only able to pocket two balls before playing safe. As the match went on, Pettipiece took control and took the lead 7-3 in ball count – leaving Briseno needing every ball on the table to earn the win. Briseno made a valiant attempt, but Pettipiece finally won the game 8-5 to continue his undefeated ways on Sunday. Briseno would take home $250 for third place.
It seemed only fitting that the tournament would come down to a final extended match between Frost and Pettipiece as they have both shown they are two of the best one pocket players in the state.
Pettipiece came out strong in the first game and took an early 1-0 lead in the race to five. Frost kidded the crowd that he had told his backer he would let Bernie win the first game. After Frost won the second game to tie the score, Bernie informed the crowd that he had told his backer he would let Scott win a couple too.
Frost would do just that, and win the next two games for a 3-1 lead before Pettipiece got back on the board at 3-2. Frost would be the first to the hill at 4-2 and Bernie would move another bead in his direction at 4-3, before Frost finally won the case game to earn the 5-3 victory and the state title.
Frost won $760 for first place, while Pettipiece would settle for $450 in prize money for second place.
The Desert Classic Tour will be back in action on October 20th and 21nd playing Bar Table l0-Ball at Stingers in Phoenix.
