The 2017 North East Pool Tour got underway at Birtley Snooker Centre
Into its third year and a sell out with 14 new players on this year’s tour
The new players all made a fine start to their tour L Shepherd reaching the S/F and only losing 6-4 but beat B Halcrow 6-0 in the Q/F.
M Rhodes was another making his Tour debut with noticeable wins over L Shepherd & L Wilson before losing in the S/F 6-4 to C Bowron.
Most of the new players held their ground well S Foxton making C Bowron work hard for his 6-5 win.
With the double elimination format it allows players two lives in the early stages M Oliver losing 6-4 to Bowron to put him in the losers half only to come through and play Bowron again in the final and take a 5-2 lead but Bowron who looked a bit jaded at this time and played solid all day dug in to come out a 6-5 winner.
Another noted game were Compton beat Rainbow 6-5 then losing to Harris 6-5 who reached the Q/F. S.Thompson lost his first game 6-4 to Rainbow but came through the losers half to lose to M Rhodes 6-3 in Q/F. G Robinson was probably the biggest name to exit early losing to L Wilson then J Watson.
Other players having good runs was new comer K.Brown just missing out on the prize fund losing 4-3 to Compton.
C.Riddell came through some tough games as also did Ninja after losing 6-5 to Dan Harris , he then defeated Gary Burdon 4-2 and Ross Terrington 4-2 before losing to Steve Thompson..!
Q/Finals
L Shepherd 6-0 B Halcrow
M Oliver. 6-1 D Harris
C Bowron 6-1 D Compton
M Rhodes 6-3 S Thompson
S/Finals
M Oliver. 6-4 L Shepherd
C Bowron 6-3 M Rhodes
Final
C Bowron 6-5 M Oliver
Tour 1 Winner
Chris Bowron
(Review completed by David Robinson aka Ninja. Thank you for your input.)