Great news!! The professional snooker tour will soon have a Canadian player competing for the first time in almost 20 years. On July 21, 2012, Floyd Ziegler from Ontario will play in England against Fergal O’Brien in a professional tournament thanks to a 2 year tour card that was granted to him recently by the WPBSA.
This proves to be yet another recent milestone for snooker in Canada and will hopefully give the game even more momentum in its recent surge in popularity.
The organization responsible for this new spot on the professional tour is Snooker Canada, along with it’s President, Patrick Guigui. Ever since Guigui returned from America to live in Canada in 2005, he kept asking people, including himself, “Why doesn’t Canada have a spot on the pro tour?”.
Well, Guigui got tired of asking this question and decided to pursue the answer himself. He called the WPBSA in England and booked an appointment with commercial director Miles Pearce. Guigui then flew over to to have lunch with Miles and the deal was done. This was finalized with countless conversations with WPBSA Chairman, Jason Ferguson. While the spot had no choice but to be granted to the governing body of snooker in Canada, the CBSA, Guigui is not bothered by this. “The bottom line is that this will help give the game a boost, that has always been our main focus at here at Snooker Canada”
This is the main reason why Snooker Canada brought the IBSF World Junior Snooker Championships to Canada last year. An event that has never been previously hosted here.
This does not stop there. There are talks of bringing over a professional event here in Canada as well. This would be something that has not been done in over 25 years. No doubt, this would be an event that snooker fans from all over Canada would come to watch.
Finally, for a country starving for more of this beautiful game, Guigui is currently working on a deal which would put snooker back on the television airwaves, again, for the first time in many years. If and when this is accomplished, the game of snooker is sure to increase in popularity even more and surely, the grassroots of snooker will begin to get back on track.
If anyone has any good ideas to help increase the game’s popularity here in Canada (in any way), please contact Patrick Guigui at 514-833-2822 or at info@snookercanada.com . As you all know, this would take the efforts of snooker players and fans from all over the country.
The 2012 Canadian Championships concluded yesterday – Hats off to Shooter Snooker and Sports Club and the Canadian Billiards and Snooker Association crew for putting together this year’s successful event. Thanks also to the CPA Southern Ontario Pool League for providing 16 days of non-stop live streaming coverage of the event. John Croft and Rod Babin did an excellent job sharing the Canadian talent across computers, laptops and mobile devices all over the world.
Below are the results of the final events.
10-Ball
After Alex Pagulayan clinched the National 8-ball and 9-ball titles earlier in the week, the question asked by everyone in tournament room was “Who is going to stop him?”. Last year’s champion Jason Klatt marched through the a-bracket with wins over Chris Fawcett (10-3) and Tyler Nearing (10-2) before running into Alex “The Lion” Pagulayan. Klatt put an end to Alex’s winning streak sending him to the b-side with a 10-5 score. Jason Klatt continued his run for the title beating Rob Phillips and Mario Morra to secure his spot in the finals.
It was John Morra that put a stop to Pagulayan’s hopes of a clean sweep, eliminating Alex from the event with a 10-7 victory. Having the biggest obstacle out of his way, John went on to win the tournament ousting Klatt in the finals 13-9.
In the snooker event, Alex had no difficulty changing from the collared shirt downstairs on the 9-foot tables to the formal vest and bow-tie upstairs on the 12-foot snooker tables. This kind of adaptability comes only from travelling the world and playing in a wide range of conditions under pressure. Alex lost only one game in the preliminary round robin stages (16 wins – 1 loss). His excellence continued in the elimination round knocking out Pat MacCarthy (5-0), Brian Butler (5-1) and John Everekian (6-1).
Alex then faced Tom Finstad from Alberta in the finals. The very experienced Finstad has been to the finals 11 times in the past with 3 titles under his belt. On his way to the finals, Tom had wins over Robin Peterson (5-0), Vito Puopolo (5-2) and Floyd Ziegler (6-5). Alex knew he had his hands full after Tom came out of the gate winning the first two games. A few missed opportunities from Tom opened the door for Alex as he moved ahead winning the next 3 before the break. After the break, Alex took control winning 3 of the next 4 frames to clinch the Canadian Snooker title for the second straight year.
Alex will be having his 34th birthday next week with plenty to celebrate. He has added 3 National titles to his resume within a week. As they often say “You can’t win them all”, but 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.
This article and photo originally appeared at www.thepoolscene.com
