Mika's Marathon

Mills rode his break into the hot-seat match - but it left him in the case game of the semifinal.

IN DAVENPORT'S place stepped Donny Mills, a regional pro who didn't have much major tournament experience to speak of, outside of a ninth-place finish at last year's event.

But when Mills is on his game, the break shot is not so much a random act of violence as it is controlled chaos. And early on, he had it down to a science. With a medium-firm stroke, he dropped a wing ball with an angle on the 1 more often than his opponents could handle.

A part-time professional from Clearwater, Fla., Mills usually sticks to regional tours, limiting his traveling to Seminole Pro Tour and KF Cues Tour stops. But the U.S. Open is a different story.

As the owner of an auto dealership, Mills sets his own hours, meaning he can find a little time every October day to get in gear for a run at the U.S. Open. During his strong performance last year, he finished in ninth place, putting together his own streak through the one-loss side after dropping an early match to Immonen.

"I really felt like if I didn't have to play him, I could have done something last year," Mills said of his second-round match against Immonen. "So I won a bunch in a row to get to ninth."

This year, without the unlucky draw, Mills made plenty of noise on his way through the winners side. He trounced England's Darren Appleton and Boyes. He then edged Rodney Morris, 11-9, to find a spot in the hot-seat match opposite Souquet, which gave the 31-year-old a chance to check off one thing on his U.S. Open to-do list.

"I have two goals coming here," Mills said. "One, I want to win the tournament. And two, I've always wanted to play on the TV table and get recorded on an Accu-Stats video. It hasn't happened yet. So I'm hoping, sooner of later, it's got to happen."

Facing Souquet with a spot in the final at stake, something changed for Mills under the bright lights of the main table. In prior matches, Mills was running away from people. Using his finely tuned break, he'd stack up racks before the other guy could get warm. But in the hot-seat match, Souquet took eight of nine racks during a stretch where he grabbed a 9-4 lead. Mills, though, responded by winning the next six racks, four of them from his break, to get on the hill, 10-9. But a dry break on the hill left Souquet a road map to forcing a case game. He then broke and ran the final rack to hand Mills his first loss of the tournament.

In the third-place match against Immonen, Mills looked totally unaffected by the loss to Souquet. With a 7-4 lead, Mills appeared set to close out the rack for a four-game advantage, when he had a tricky angle on a thin cut on the 8 ball. Trying to go four rails for position on the 9, Mills watched the cue ball circle around the table, eventually dropping in the side pocket. What should have been an 8-4 lead was now reduced to 7-5. Immonen took over from there, climbing on the hill, 10-8.

Again shaking off a tough roll, Mills fought back to take the next two, holding the break in the decisive 21st rack. But he opened the case game with an errant cue ball, one that bounced off the long rail and into the opposite side pocket, ending his tournament. Immonen cleaned up for a spot in the final, while Mills was left dejected in third-place.

"I feel like I want to puke," Mills said. "I can't stand the way I lost those two matches. That was the only time I scratched on the break the whole tournament."

Previous Page Page 3 Next Page >

Top