Jayson Shaw and Fedor Gorst
In the end, Jayson Shaw won a record 7th Turning Stone Classic title at the Turning Stone Classic XXXIV on January 6th – 9th, but it was far from a sure thing.
Shaw started the final day with a hill-hill win over Kuwait’s Abdullah Al Youssef to earn his place in the hot-seat match against World Champion Fedor Gorst.
Gorst kept Shaw in the chair for the majority of the hot-seat match and scored the 9-3 win to send Shaw to the one loss side.
On the one loss side, Shaw found Al Youssef waiting. Al Youssef came out of the gate strong and took an early 5-0 lead. Shaw had trailed by five racks multiple times during this event, and came back time and time again. This was another one of those times as Shaw came back to tie things at 7-7. From there, he won the last two racks for the 9-7 win and a rematch with Gorst in the extended race to 13 finals.
Just like his last two matches, Shaw found himself in a big deficit early. He won the first two racks but then watched Gorst win eight of the next nine racks for an 8-3 lead. With Gorst leading 9-4, he missed what should have been a routine 2-ball, and Shaw took control of the table. Shaw won seven straight racks for an 11-9 lead before scratching on the break in the 21st rack. Gorst ran that rack to get back within one at 11-10 down but broke dry in the next rack. Shaw hung a bank attempt on the 1-ball and when Gorst swerved around the edge of an obstructing 2-ball to hit the 1-ball, he followed the 1-ball in with the cue ball. That lead to Shaw taking the hill at 12-10. After a very brief safety battle on the 1-ball in the next rack, Gorst left Shaw a shot and Shaw ran out for the 13-10 win.
The win started Shaw off on the right track for 2022, with an $8,000 payday, while Gorst settled for $5,000 in second place prize money.
