Strange Things Afoot On The Predator Tour
July 24th, 2008 by PCN
Over the weekend, Predator presented the first Jim Murnak Women’s Open, which drew some very familiar names including Emily “Yummy” Duddy, Caroline Pao and one of my favorite WPBAers, the always foxy Liz Ford. So the newsworthy thing here is that Liz and Iris Ranola decided to call it a tie rather than play out the match to determine the winner and split the title.
Now you all know how much I dig Liz Ford and really I don’t blame her or Iris for calling it considering how late in the evening it was, but the reality is that this sort of thinig should not have been allowed. In pro matches, you don’t shake hands and call it a tie, especially in the championships. Sure, we’re not talking about big money here, but that’s not the point. Could you imagine Nadal and Federer saying “let’s just split the title”?
There have been rumblings about this sort of thing happening for years, either when it is done officially as Liz and Iris did or with backroom private deals where the two finalists agree to split the winnings regardless of who actually wins the final match. The promoter of this event should have either told the players to play out the final match or if they were both too tired, to play it the next morning. Sharing a title simply shouldn’t be an option. If pool ever wants to be taken seriously as a professional sport, a good first step would be playing out the championship matches.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under Liz Ford, Pool and Billiard News, Predator Pool Cues, WPBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Splitting is BOGUS!
July 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Long time listener, first time caller…
Just a little explanation about what went down: This was the first time that the Predator Tour staff tried its hand at running a women’s event. Not knowing that our events run much more slowly than open events, a decision was made to finish the event in one day instead of the advertised two days.
The semi-finals ended at 3am and it was decided as a group (tour staff, room owners, both Iris and myself) that splitting was both appropriate and courteous to all involved. I would go so far as to say it was “strongly encouraged.” I am not in favor of BS so I said “no” to a coin flip to decide the winner and said that if we split then we should share the title.
Just my side of things. I was pwning the balls at that point, so I would have loved to play it out, but it was a judgment call…
July 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Thanks for the details Liz. I can’t believe they asked you to flip a coin to determine the winner! That’s just plain awful. You know how much I dig you and your game, so I figured it was a bit of mismanagement on the part of the TD. By the way, can I tell you how much more I dig you now after using the phrase “pwning the balls”? A pool player who uses gamer/hacker speak? You are the 1337 pool player!