Gold Spike Tour Pulls into Mountain View

 The weekend of May 22-23, 2004, saw the Gold Spike arrive at Chet Itow’s beautiful California Billiard Club.   Considered o­ne of the premier player’s rooms in the United States, California Billiard Club was the perfect host for the fifth leg of the event. 

A total of 74 players battled out for $5,440 in prize money, with the field including the likes of Mike Massey, Ian Costello, Rafael Martinez, Tony Annigoni, and George Michaels.  But it was Jason Williams who triumphed in the end with his win over Tommy Lipps in the finals.

With 47% of the matches finishing hill-hill or 8-6, the handicap system proved itself yet again.  While the high handicaps reasserted themselves in this event, there were plenty of surprises.  The best performer of the over-150 handicap range by far was Ian Costello (160 average).  Costello played great all day o­nly to fall to eventual winner Williams (played at 130) 8-3 and was then demolished by Nick Collado 8-1.

Despite playing flawlessly all day, Tommy Lipps could not stave off a hot Williams in the true double-elimination format.  Playing at 100, Lipps had a great day o­n the tables, but a long wait for the finals while Williams was mowing down people o­n the o­ne-loss side was a bad formula for Lipps.  However, he took it in stride, considering he works two jobs as well as competes at this level.  With the final score 8-4 Williams, both players performed exceptionally well.

Results:

1st Jason Williams

2nd Tom Lipps

3rd Duane Grimes

4th Nick Callado

5th Ian Costello, Joey Gebron

7th Simon Dudley, Jonny Warren

9th Rey Moran, Dirk Grundmann, Jun Valiao, Colin Mazaika