Johnny Archer and Josh Roberts
About three rounds into Stop #2 on the 2nd Annual Rack Race, an older gentleman with a white, grizzled beard, cap and coat patrolled the area around Table #5 at Rack & Grill II, an old-school roadhouse on the outskirts of Augusta, GA this past weekend (Sat., Feb. 3-4). He pushed his walker around the area, engaging in conversation with various people in the room. As two players began to practice at the event’s ‘streaming’ table, the man pushed himself up to a stranger and with something of a mischievous grin, asked a question that was on a lot of minds in the room.
“Who you think’s going to win this?” he asked.
It took the stranger a beat or two to understand that the older man was asking for a prediction about who was going to win the entire event, not just the individual match about to begin on Table #5. As it turned out, the competitors about to match up in Round Three, Josh Roberts and Johnny Archer, would become the event’s finalists, as well.
The stranger gave it some thought before replying, “Roberts,” and the old man’s eyes twinkled with youthful enthusiasm.
“I got ‘em both,” he said with a self-satisfied smile.
‘Favorites’ in pool matches don’t always win the tournaments in which they’re engaged, especially if one is attempting to guess both the winner and runner-up, in what’s known in horse racing as an Exacta bet. The old man had it figured right and as early as the third round, he was enjoying himself.
So too, were Roberts and Archer, though to different degrees and at a different pace. Between them, they had given up only three racks total in their first two matches; Roberts downing Ricky Baugham and Greg Sheffield, both 6-1, Archer downing Billy Holmes 6-1 in his opener and shutting out Tyler Hess in his second match. Roberts would end up going undefeated in the $1,000-added event that drew 49 entrants to Rack & Grill II, south of Augusta.
There were a lot of eyes-on in their first encounter, because the older gentleman had not been the only observer to hitch his ‘wagon’ to the dual-stars of Roberts and Archer. Everybody wanted to see how their first match played out.
Johnny broke dry to get things underway, though Roberts didn’t get further than the 2-ball. Johnny scratched, shooting at the 3-ball. Roberts cleared the table to open the scoring, dropped two on his break and ran the table to go up 2-0. Johnny dropped three on his break, but left himself without a shot at the 4-ball. Roberts stepped up, worked his way around the decent ‘safe’ shot Johnny had left him and dropped a couple of balls before a runaway cue ball dropped into a hole, turning the table back over. Johnny cleared the rack to get on the board and then, off Roberts’ break, tied things up at 2-2.
And if, at this point, there was any doubt that one was in a Georgia roadhouse pool hall, with its 6,000-sq. ft., 16 pool tables (10 Brunswick and six Diamond coin-ops; soon, with expansion, 10,000 sq. ft. and 12 more Diamond tables), its bar and dining tables, its row of slot machines, its Southern menu and beers being served to its ‘cast of characters’ patrons, Toby Keith made it official; his voice emerging from the jukebox to talk about the “winners and losers” and other assorted folk that “like to drink (their) beer from a mason jar.” Letting people know and sharing the central thought behind his 20-year-old hit song, I Love This Bar.
As the song went on, Roberts won four games in a row to defeat Johnny 6-2 and send him off on a seven-match, loss-side winning streak that led to him playing four more matches than any other competitor in the tournament. Roberts, in the meantime, advanced to meet and defeat one of the other possible contenders for the event title, Keith Bennett 6-3 in a winners’ side quarterfinal. Roberts drew yet another contender, Mike Staubes, in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
From the opposite end of the bracket, Larry Broughton had been awarded an opening-round bye and managed to claw his way to the other winners’ side semifinal against Timmy Prince. Two of the three matches Broughton won to get there went double hill; his first, against Robert Nottingham and his third, versus Mike Champagne. He’d defeated Will Craycraft 6-3 in the middle.
Roberts and Broughton gave up a rack each, to Staubes and Prince, and squared off in the hot seat match. Roberts claimed the hot seat 6-3 and began a two-hour-plus wait for Archer to complete his loss-side run.
Archer, in the meantime, had barely survived his first loss-side match. His opponent, Eddie Wahdan, was on the hill, ahead by 3 at 4-1, when Archer mounted a comeback that saw him win the match 5-4. He followed that with a 5-1 victory over Calvin Le and two straight 5-3 wins over Mikes Champagne and Wise to draw his third ‘Mike’ in a row, Staubes. Tracy Prescott, who’d lost a winners’ side quarterfinal to Staubes before downing Thomas Tew 5-2, leapfrogged over Keith Bennett (forfeit) to pick up Prince.
Archer advanced to the quarterfinals 5-1 over Staubes. Prince and Prescott battled to double hill before Prince won to join Archer. Archer took the quarterfinal (loss-side win #6) 5-3 over Prince and then eliminated Broughton in the semifinals 5-1.
Archer battled Roberts to within a game of double hill in the finals, but Roberts completed his undefeated run and claimed his second straight, 2024 Rack Race event with a 6-4 win over Archer.
Tour director, owner of all three Rack & Grill locations and the creator of the Rack Race series, Mike Newsome and his newly-wed wife, Avery (they married in November), thanked their staff for assistance with all of the Rack Race series events at all three locations, as well as sponsors Newsome Distributing, Salazar, Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions, Predator, JTs Automotive Group, Pepsi, CSRA Machine Fab, DigitalPool, National Billiard Academy, Simonis Cloth and (streaming services) NO-BS Tournaments.
The next stop on the Rack Race series (Stop #3), will be one of the series’ three ‘special’ events, offering additional monies-added. The $4,000-added event, scheduled for the weekend of Feb. 17-18, will be hosted by Newsome’s Rack & Grill III room in Aiken, SC. Further information about the Rack Race series and its season-long prize packages can be found on the Rack and Grill Facebook page.
(Author note: I’d like to personally thank Mike and Avery Newsome for the hospitality they extended to me during my time in their Rack and Grill II location this past weekend. They went way above the normal call of duty to assure that I was fed and beveraged as I watched Rack Race stop #2 play out in front of me. The hospitality extended to a pool table, where Mike used a key in a coin-op table to set us up for a little race-to-2 series of 8-ball games. It went double-hill but hospitality didn’t enter into his taking two out of the three matches)
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