Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Pro Singles: @Kane Waselenchuk
Kane wins his 131st career Tier1 title on tour, which now gives him an even 60 more titles than 2nd place Cliff Swain in the known history of the tour.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/portfolio/r2-event.asp?TID=50060
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/43f709
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In the 32s: the two most notable/closest matches involved the two tourney hosts @Charlie Pratt and @Wayne Antone.
– Pratt (a former Tier 1 winner himself) matched up against the former #1 Moscoso as the Bolivian continues his comeback trail from falling out of the top 20 due to injury; Charlie could do little with Moscoso, losing 4,2.
– Antone played touring veteran @Robbie Collins tough in the first game, but eventually fell 12,5 to the hard hitting Hawaiian.
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In the 16s, we saw mostly blow-outs, as there seems to be the beginnings of a gap on tour as the top 8-10 players seem like they’re beginning to separate themselves from the rest of the tour. There were two relatively close matches though and a couple others worth noting:
– #8 @Adam Manilla crushed #9 @Jordy Alonso 2,6, kind of making a statement about where both players truly sit right now. Alonso had a couple of notable events earlier this year, but has struggled to break into the top 10, while Manilla’s injury has him stuck in that dreaded #8/#9 slot that plays into Kane, making it tougher for him to move up.
– #5 @Rodrigo Montoya Racquetball was stretched a bit by @Diego Gastelum 7,12. Gastelum (along with the likes of Garcia, Flores, Hernandez, Trujillo, and Miranda) seems like the next “wave” of players that will be taking over the tour’s middle class, and it’s just a matter of time before we see Diego winning this kind of match.
– #13 Moscoso beat #4 @Andree Parrilla 14,10 in this week’s “top 8 seed who gets beat way too early because Mosocso is on his come back tour” match.
– Mar shellacked Martell 4,4 in a match I thought would be a bit closer.
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In the Quarters
– Manilla certainly made Kane work for it a bit more than in Denver a couple weeks ago, losing 12,6
– In perhaps the tourney’s best match, Moscoso over came match points against in game two before winning in a breaker. final score: (8),14,4
– #3 @Jake Bredenbeck out-controlled Mar’s control game and ground out a 10,9 win to move on.
– #2 @Andres Acuna, the defending event champ, was brought back to earth when he couldn’t convert match point against #7 @alan Natera. Natera moves into the semis for just the second time in his career.
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In the Semis
– Kane beat Moscoso in the longest 4,3 match you’ll ever see, which took 45 minutes and was back and forth 3-shot rallies being traded by the tour’s two hardest hitters. In the end, Kane’s consistency and Moscoso’s error-prone shot making was the difference in this “blowout” that, amazingly, was a lot closer than the score line indicated.
– Jake handled Natera in two close games to get to his 9th career pro final.
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In the Finals, we saw an interesting match for sure. Jake scored the first seven points (as many as Moscoso got in his entire match) and at one point had a 10-1 lead over Kane in game one by serving absolutely lights out to both sides of the court. Kane had little answer for Jake’s pinpoint serve placement to open the match. Kane eventually got back into the game but ran out of time in his comeback, losing Game one 15-11.
Clearly Kane just needed a bit more warm-up time, because from the start of game 2 to the end of the match, it was one-way traffic the other way. Kane blasted Jake off the court 15-2 by flipping the script and himself serving even more effectively than Jake did in the opener, and then Kane didn’t letup until the match was over, winning the match (11),2,2. Kane went down 10-1 in the first game … then won 36 points to Jake’s 8 the rest of the way.
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Points Implications of results
Kane adds to his lead atop the tour: he’s now 1000 points ahead of Acuna in 2nd place, but is now entering a stretch where he’s defending max points for the next six months: he won four straight times between October 2024 and Mar 2025, so any non-win means the tour is catching up to him for a while.
Portillos’ absence and Parrilla’s early loss cost them: they drop from 3 & 4 to 7&8 respectively. Jake ascends to #3 on tour with his finals appearance. Moscoso moves up to #11, Trujillo drops to #15 in the only other significant top-20 player movement.
In a couple week’s time, when Last year’s Spokane event expires, we will see even more movement. We likely will see Mar moving up to a career high as Montoya has more points expiring from mid Oct 2024.
Here’s a link to my IRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.
men
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Doubles review: there was no Pro doubles in Eugene.
Open Singles, other notable draws
– Local player @Sunji Spencer beat IRT touring regular @Carlos Ramirez to win Open Singles.
– Antone/Turner beat Spencer/Rivera in a small Open Doubles draw.
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Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
Next up we move to the Manilla/Horn Golden State Open in Pleasanton, where we’ll have both the men and women pros in action!
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tags
@International racquetball tour