Matt Smith, Jon Rawlins and Mark Johnson
When the dust settled at the end of the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour’s 2024 season, Gus Briseno was at the top of the tour standings with an 11-year-old, Gavin Ray Matthew, in third place. Briseno had competed in nine of the tour’s 10 events, winning two of them and finishing as runner-up, once. Mathew had competed in seven of the 10, winning the last one (in Oct.) and finishing as runner-up (to Briseno), twice.
All this, by way of introducing the two competitors who held second and fourth place on that 2024 tour-standings list. They were, respectively, Mark Johnson and Jon Rawlins, who, this past weekend (Feb. 15-16), finished, also respectively, second and first at the $1,000-added, second stop on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour’s 2025 season, which had drawn 64 entrants to Massey Shots in Plano, TX. In the absence of Briseno and Mathew, Rawlins and Johnson stood as the top competitors from last year’s tour, who eventually faced off against each other in the finals of this year’s second stop on the tour.
The event was ‘billed’ as a Split Bracket event, though there was actually just one, split into upper and lower, 32-player brackets. The two didn’t merge on the winners’ side until the hot seat match.
“The split bracket is new for us this year,” explained tour representative Monica Anderson. “We’re trying to share the wealth, so to speak, with lower-level players.”
“This past weekend,” she went on to say, “we took players who were 545 and below in the low side bracket and players 546 and above in the high side bracket.”
Rawlins ended up with the ‘harder row to hoe’ in this event, losing his third-round match to Ruben Adame 7-5, and packing for what proved to be a seven-match, loss-side trip. Adame advanced just once more on the winners’ side before being defeated by Clint Freeman (2024’s #5), who advanced to one of the winners’ side semifinals.
Mark Johnson, in the meantime, started out with a 7-5 win over Hector Guerrero and then, survived three straight, double-hill challenges by Ray Hinton, Nigel Francis and Greg Sandifer. It was Johnson who then squared off against Freeman. From the lower end of the bracket, Matt Smith got through a pair of 6-4 and one 6-3 match, before shutting out Ricky Phifer and drawing Darrell Smith in the other winners’ side semifinal.
It was Smith (Matt), who advanced to the hot seat match 6-1 over Smith (Darrell). Johnson shut out Freeman in their winners’ side semifinal. Johnson then chalked up his second straight shutout to claim the hot seat over Smith (Matt).
When Johnson claimed that hot seat (according to digitalpool.com’s time stamp on the bracket), Jon Rawlins was playing his fifth loss-side match. He’d won two double-hill matches against Hector Guerrero and Nitin Malik at the start of his loss-side adventures and then, eliminated Vishnu Vardhan 8-2 to draw Freeman. Smith (Darrell) came over and picked up Ruben Adame, who’d followed his loss to Freeman with victories over Eric Terry 7-5 and Eli Bomsburger 8-5.
Rawlins eliminated Freeman 7-4, Adame did likewise to Smith (Darrell) 7-2, and the rematch was on. Rawlins successfully wreaked his vengeance on Adame for making his day four matches longer than it might have been otherwise, defeating him 7-4 in the quarterfinals. In his first match racing to 9, Rawlins punched his ticket to the true double-elimination final with a 9-3 victory over Matt Smith in the semifinals.
In straight-up races to 7, Rawlins got a ‘momentum’ boost and used it to win the opening set against Mark Johnson 7-1. As it so often does, a loss in the first set of a double-elimination final has a way of becoming a ‘wake up’ call to the hot seat occupant. It did in this case, but the ‘call’ came in a bit late and Johnson was only able to chalk up four racks in the second set. Rawlins claimed the event title 7-4.
Tour representatives thanked the ownership and staff at Massey Shots for their hospitality, along with title sponsor Cuetec, and Fort Worth Billiard Superstore, Rasson Billiards and DFW Pool TV. The next stop on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for the weekend of March 22-23, will be hosted by the VFW in Sherman, TX.
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