THE LINDRUM MASTERS

New South Wales, Australia (14th-19th September 1998)

The "Golden Cue" tournament which was won last year by Peter Gilchrist was staged as part of the Walter Lindrum Centenary Celebrations in Australia, and consequently renamed the "Lindrum Masters". Playing to a slightly different format on this occasion, each match consisted of games from Billiards, Snooker, Eight-ball Pool, and Nine-ball Pool.

Four invited representatives from each discipline played off in groups to determine which of them would make up the semi-final. Billiards and Snooker events were decided by the first player to 100 points, and each pool discipline was the first to four games, with each game worth 25 points to the winner. Matches were decided on the total aggregate points.

The decision to play the snooker over aggregate score rather than frames, raised a few eyebrows, especially as this would involve the match finishing mid-way through a frame. When Snooker was first played over 100 years ago, aggregate score was always the method used to determine the winner of an extended match. In fact, deciding matches on the basis of frames won was only introduced to Championship matches in 1927. However, this seems to be the first time that a fixed number of points has been applied to a major championship event.

Group A contained all of the billiard players, who were Mike Russell, Peter Gilchrist, Geet Sethi and Robby Foldvari.

Geet Sethi established an early lead in the group with an opening victory over Mike Russell. This was sustained when he took maximum points against Foldvari, recording an impressive 400-178 aggregate win over the four disciplines. With Gilchrist also taking maximum points against Russell, his final group match against Sethi would decided which of them would progress to the semi-finals. In the event, it was Sethi who proved the stronger, winning all sections in a comfortable victory.

Group B were the snooker players, with Jimmy White and Willie Thorne representing England, Dene O’Kane for New Zealand, and Cliff Thorburn for Canada.

Jimmy White made a fine start to the competition by taking three of the four disciplines to put him on top of Group B after the opening day, alongside Dene O’Kane who was on the same number of points. However, going into the final tie against the New Zealander, White had been overtaken by 33 points on aggregate score by O’Kane. Starting with this disadvantage, White proceeded to lose the billiards game, but then recovered well to win all the remaining disciplines, and the Group, setting up a meeting with Geet Sethi

Somehow, veteran snooker player Eddie Charlton managed to be selected as an eight-ball representative in Group C. Now in his 68th year, "Steady Eddie" was opposed in this group by ladies No.1 Karen Corr, Oliver Ortmann and Kirk Stevens.

Karen Corr, who was the only woman competing in the Masters, started well by taking maximum points against Eddie Charlton, winning all four sections. She next went on to win both the pool events against Kirk Stevens, but heavy losses in both the snooker and billiards sections gave the 40 year-old Canadian the match. Even so, she stood just 12 points behind Ortmann going into the deciding match against him. However, Ortmann proved too strong and defeated Corr in all sections to win the group, having previously disposed of Stevens and Charlton.

The nine-ball group featured Australian Quinten Hann, Mike Massey from the USA, Tiawanese Fong Pang Chao and New Zealand’s Stan Maffey.

Local favourite Quinten Hann and Mike Massey both collected maximum points from their opening matches to head Group D after the first day. The decisive match between them came on the second day when 21 year-old Hann from Melbourne, beat the American trick- shot specialist in three of the four disciplines. Hann followed this with a comfortable win over Stan Maffey to book his semi-final place against Oliver Ortmann.

In the semi-finals, Quinten Hann easily overcame the challenge of Oliver Ortmann, but Sethi put up a great fight before going down to Jimmy White by just two points.

White scored just 12 points in the 100 up leg of billiards as Hann made breaks of 51 and 51 unfinished to put him in a commanding position, and after adding the snooker section 100-68 it always looked to be an uphill battle for the "Whirlwind". Hann secured his victory by winning the eight-ball pool, four games to one, although White had the consolation of defeating Hann 4-2 in his "specialist" section of nine- ball.