1994 US Open Onepocket Video - Jack Cooney vs Bruce Perry

[CaliRed]

Well, here we go ! These matches are brought to you by sappo from this site. He shipped the VHS tapes to me and I converted them over to be able to upload to Vimeo. Since youtube has a 15 min restriction (unless you get lucky and the remove it), I uploaded to Vimeo so they can be shown in their entirety. These VHS tapes were from the owner of the Billiard Playground, who taped some of the matches when the US Open was held there, in Kalamazoo, MI.

For some unknown reason, there is no audio on the tapes. As far as the quality, keep in mind these were taken with 17-20 year old technology as far as camcorders, plus you got the tape degradation from 17 years of sitting around, the conversion from tape to digital format and the uploading to Vimeo. Considering all of that, these matches are perfectly fine to get to watch some great onepocket from our players of almost 2 decades ago.

The tournament details: (thanks to Mark Griffin for the details, maybe more to come)
Aug 25-28th at Billiards Playground in Kalamazoo, MI.
Grady was the Tournament Director. A article mentions Ed Hall was the owner, but Matt Rosendahl was heavily involved.
$100 entry
39 player field
$10,200 in prize money
Billy Incardona was the winners bracket winner and came in 2nd to Joyner.
1st -Cliff Joyner $2,800
2nd -Billy Incardona ($2,000)
3rd -Willie Munson ($1,500)
4th -Grady Mathews ($1,000)
5-6th -Ritchie Richeson $500
5-6th -Cornbread Red $500

In our 1st matchup, our very own One Pocket Ghost (Bruce Perry) gets Jack Cooney right off the bat. Now while Jack hands the Ghost a 4-0 defeat, that is nothing to be ashamed about. There was actually many 4-0 matches. For example, Billy Incardona beat Grady Mathews 4-0.

The Ghost made a post here back in 2004 and said this....

Steve, here’s the U.S. Open results that I told you I’d post....and by the way, just as you thought, there were five U.S. Opens in Kalamazoo (’96 through 2000) - I was there and played in all of them....and with my usual sob story/tough luck drawing, the first two years (’96 and ’97) in the first round, I drew the number one pick in the Calcutta - namely, Jack Cooney in ’96 (and by the way, people were a little surprised to see Jack show up there) and Cliff in ’97. OK, I’ll stop crying now. Anyway, here are the results

But apparently he was a little mixed up about those dates. There appears to have been 7 US Open's held in Kalamazoo (94-2000) I think him saying 96, was actually 94.

Ghost also mentions this, when Steve asked how he did at the US Opens.

I did ok at the Open, won a few bucks = 9th-12th in ‘97, 7th/8th in ‘98 and 13th-16th in ‘99

Anyone that was there, chime in and tell us some stories from that year.

I hope everyone enjoys these. All thanks go to sappo for sharing these with us and it was my pleasure to do the work converting them over.

Here is the link that I will be posting all of the video's in. It's a Album on my Vimeo site called 1994 US Open Onepocket Championships

Jack Cooney vs Bruce Perry - Running time 36 minutes
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/27974281?byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" height="516" width="700"></iframe>

 

[vapros]

Major upset! Cooney over the Ghost. Thanks to Sappo and CaliRed for some fine entertainment. I'm ready for the next one.

 

[CaliRed]

You know I"m not sure here, but maybe the Ghost did get 1 game. I just watched the 1st game and the Ghost had about 6 or 7 balls and Jack had none or 1 and then at 9:00 min in to the video, it went from the balls all in a pack, to spread all over.

Now Jack does end up getting all those balls except for 1, which would be 5... so either the Ghost scratched at least once or something bad happened.

What happened was, someone taped over the match with some other program for a short period, which I cut out.

I'm leaning towards the Ghost getting one game and then Jack winning 4 straight. I could go back and do all sorts of forensics work to figure it out, but guess what... I'm not going to

Let's just call it 4-1

 

[SJDinPHX]

Thanks much Greg and Keith..I actually enjoyed it more without two massively opinionated commentaters.. I know Ghosty is under the weather, so I shall reserve any negative comments (regarding his play) until such time as he may be better able to tolerate it..

El Duck <---However, I must say, after watching the video, the Duck realizes now, he could have let Fast Lenny substitute for him, when he couldn't make it to DCC...

 

[Jimmy B]

No, I think Jack took it four in a row. The play starts with The Ghost coming to the table after Jacks opening break. Then The Ghost breaks game 2 and 4 and it's over. This is a good match to show a real sampling of Jacks fantastic abilities. This was how he really played when he was wide open and really wanting to win. That arm and that Balabushka working together like a machine. Bruce plays good too. Losing the opening game I think threw him off a bit and he got a little jumpy and made a couple of bad mistakes and got a couple of bad rolls. Great job Greg. You are one of, if not the most valuable poster we now have. Thanks...............

 

[One Pocket Ghost]

Yeah, Keith told me last winter that he acquired all of these tapes including the one with me playing Jack...

Thanks Keith and Greg for resurrecting them - although I'm not sure I wanted to watch myself losing to Jack again...

This was the first year of the tournament and the atmosphere was great - everybody was psyched and ready to play...naturally with my luck I draw Jack (who was first pick in the Calcutta) in the first round and play him on the front/video table where all of the main crowd/sweaters are sitting around...actually I remember playing pretty good against him except for one bad scratch because of misjudging a kick - and I think he ran 8 and out twice on me, giving me no chance to battle him those games....and I remember that first game of the set well, because I was playing good and I got ahead of him 6 to -1 on his break, and I was feeling good - then 20 minutes later I was feeling sick after he won the game.....

Since some of the tape of that game was missing, for those of you who watched the tape and were wondering what happened to let Jack back in the game, what happened was...I naturally went into squeeze-mode and was trying to send the balls up-table...I only had time to get a couple of them up there, and then Jack, seeing what I was doing decided to shoot a low percentage do or die shot...it was either a backwards cut, or a kiss/carom shot, I can't remember which, with the cueball going into the cluster near the spot, sending balls flying around - if he misses it I win....but Jack, champion player that he is, made the shot and then ran about 5 or 6 balls - several innings later he won the game.

- Ghost

 

[SJDinPHX]

Yeah, Keith told me last winter that he acquired all of these tapes including the one with me playing Jack...

Thanks Keith and Greg for resurrecting them - although I'm not sure I wanted to watch myself losing to Jack again...

This was the first year of the tournament and the atmosphere was great - everybody was psyched and ready to play...naturally with my luck I draw Jack (who was first pick in the Calcutta) in the first round and play him on the front/video table where all of the main crowd/sweaters are sitting around...actually I remember playing pretty good against him except for one bad scratch because of misjudging a kick - and I think he ran 8 and out twice on me, giving me no chance to battle him those games....and I remember that first game of the set well, because I was playing good and I got ahead of him 6 to -1 on his break, and I was feeling good - then 20 minutes later I was feeling sick after he won the game.....

Since some of the tape of that game was missing, for those of you who watched the tape and were wondering what happened to let Jack back in the game, what happened was...I naturally went into squeeze-mode and was trying to send the balls up-table...I only had time to get a couple of them up there, and then Jack, seeing what I was doing decided to shoot a low percentage do or die shot...it was either a backwards cut, or a kiss/carom shot, I can't remember which, with the cueball going into the cluster near the spot, sending balls flying around - if he misses it I win....but Jack, champion player that he is, made the shot and then ran about 5 or 6 balls - several innings later he won the game.

- Ghost

Ghosty, sincerely hope you've recovered well enough, from your "teeny, tiny" surgery,....to read post #4...