{"id":414,"date":"2019-03-06T13:44:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T13:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/?p=414"},"modified":"2019-03-06T13:44:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T13:44:39","slug":"2019-pueblo-athletic-club-shoot-out-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/06\/2019-pueblo-athletic-club-shoot-out-wrap-up\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot-out Wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Kane drops into a non-Tier 1 and is the double winner.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Mexican Nationals and High School Nationals, there were a couple of lower-tier IRT events this past weekend. This is a wrap-up of the best of them, the Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot out, a Tier 4 held in Pueblo, CO that featured a few familiar names and a couple of surprising results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a wrap-up of the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

r2sports link: http:\/\/www.r2sports.com\/website\/event-website.asp?TID=30460<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reminder: we don’t load non-tier 1 or higher events into the PRS database; this post is just a wrap-up as a fan of the game. I’ll pick up the draw reviews at the latter stages when the familiar pro names start playing each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

———–
Men’s Pro Singles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The draw featured 30 players, and its top 4 seeds were tour regulars that included #1\u00a0Kane Waselenchuk<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0David Horn<\/strong><\/a>, defending champ\u00a0Jake Bredenbeck<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Nick Riffel<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0formed the top four seeds. This is notable to me because I can’t recall seeing Kane play in a non Tier-1 IRT tournament in .. well a long time. It may be b\/c I don’t generally track non-Tier1 events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 5th seed is the dangerous Erik Garcia<\/strong>, who beat touring pro\u00a0Robert Collins<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0before taking a game off of eventual champ\u00a0Rocky Carson<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0at the US Singles qualifier event in Tempe last month. The rest of the draw featured mostly local players, with a sprinkling of traveling players w\/ enough IRT points to rate a seeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Quarters. a couple of surprises:
– Erik Garcia got a solid win over touring pro Nick Riffel in a tiebreaker in the 4\/5 match. He earns a match against the King in the semis. I’d like to see Garcia play more pro events; he’s got some good results lately and I think he could make some noise on tour.
– Complete unknown (to me)\u00a0Ruben Baez<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0ousted #3 seed Jake Bredenbeck 10,(5),5. I can’t find Baez playing any match in any format that the PRS database tracks, and he was seeded\u00a027th\u00a0in this event, traveling up from El Paso to play it. I saw bits and pieces of this match: Baez plays a control game, has a very effective lob serve, and was completely non-plussed by Jake’s power, re-killing power DTL shots and anticipating power-pinches. He earns a match-up against #2 seeded Horn in the semis for his efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Semis:
– Waselenchuk took out Garcia 8,3. Garcia kept up with the champ briefly, but eventually fell in typical Kane dominance.
– Horn took out the upstart Baez by the close scores of 13,14. Thanks to\u00a0Matt Melster<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for streaming this one real-time; I watched part of this match as well to see how Baez matched-up with the different playing style of Horn, one which was much closer seemingly to his own … and as expected this was a very back-and-forth close match throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Final, Kane turned up the heat and cruised by Horn 7,0, showing his typical dominance that the rest of the IRT tour sees on a regular basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

———–
My take-away here: it isn’t often that a player just shows up without any prior pro experience and plays so well against two of the top 20 players in the world. I hope to see more of Baez in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

———–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men’s Pro Doubles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pueblo supporters were also blessed to have with them one of the two best doubles teams in the world. Kane teamed up with\u00a0Ben Croft<\/strong><\/a>, and they’ve won more than a few major doubles titles in their day. They were the #1 seed, with Jake & Horn teaming up to be the #2 seeds and Riffel\/Garcia being the #3 seeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the semis, Bredenbeck\/Horn took out Riffel\/Garcia 11-9, while Kane\/Ben took out the team with the surprising Baez teamed with Daniel Bautista<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Saturday night final, the #1 team did not disappoint and won in two 10,5 over the #2 seeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

———–
Women’s Open: there was a small but solid Women’s open draw, with two touring LPRT pros in Carla Mu\u00f1oz Montesinos<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Adriana Riveros<\/strong><\/a>, joined in the draw by multi junior world champion\u00a0Erika Manilla<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and periodic LPRT tour player\u00a0Brenda Laime Jalil<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the semis, Manilla took out #1 seeded Munoz in two solid games 11,12, while Riveros advanced past Laime 6,13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Finals, Manilla made it two upsets in a row, downing Riveros 12,13. Great results for Manilla on the weekend, and I hope to see more of her on the pro tour going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to Mexican Nationals and High School Nationals, there were a couple of lower-tier IRT events this past weekend. This is a wrap-up of the best of them, the Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot out, a Tier 4 held in Pueblo, CO that featured a few familiar names and a couple of surprising results. Here’s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “2019 Pueblo Athletic Club Shoot-out Wrap-up”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,7,98],"tags":[73,133,172,66,353,40,146,151,35,11,352,33,29,15,351],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doubles","category-irt","category-singles","category-usa","tag-adriana-riveros","tag-ben-croft","tag-brenda-laime","tag-carla-munoz","tag-daniel-bautista","tag-david-horn","tag-erik-garcia","tag-erika-manilla","tag-jake-bredenbeck","tag-kane-waselenchuk","tag-matt-melster","tag-nick-riffel","tag-robert-collins","tag-rocky-carson","tag-ruben-baez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.proracquetballstats.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}