Mike Dechaine (Photo courtesy of Diana Hoppe)
Day one is complete at the 35th Annual US Open 9-Ball Championship and the story of the day was former champion Shane Van Boening's loss to Mike Dechaine. The match took place on the Accu-Stats table and Dechaine put on a show, completely dominating Van Boening 11-3. Shawn Putnam looked like he was on the way to a similar upset over reigning World 9-Ball Champion Francisco Bustamante in the final round of the day, but Bustamante proved to be harder to beat than Van Boening as he came back and defeated Putnam 11-9 in a very close match.
The rest of the day's matches didn't see any other major upsets, with the possible exception of Rory Hendrickson's 11-9 win over Antonio Lining.
Most of the ladies in attendance at the event played on day one, with Jennifer Barretta, Amy Chen and Gerda Hofstatter all scoring first round wins. Loree Jon Hasson (formerly Jones) led her match against Shaun Wilkie early, but ran out of steam and lost 11-8. Belinda Calhoun kept her match with Ramil Gallego close, but ended up losing 11-7.
Marquee matches scheduled for the first half of day two include Johnny Archer vs Dennis Orcollo, Mika Immonen vs Kenichi Uchigaki, Stevie Moore vs Bahram Lofty, Shaun Wilkie vs BJ Ussery and Mike Dechaine vs Lo Li Wen.
The Accu-Stats schedule for the first half of Monday is:
11am - Hunter Lombardo vs Roberto Gomez
1pm - Darren Appleton vs Ronald Tutein
3pm - Johnny Archer vs Dennis Orcollo
We have complete coverage of the event with real time scoring, online brackets and daily video updates from Samm Diep at http://usopen.azbilliards.com
