Time Frame

JUST MORE than 12 months ago, as he looked back on 2008 after winning his first Player of the Year award, Immonen wondered aloud, “Is it too late to be the Player of the Decade?”

At the time, the answer was clearly yes, it was too late. Before he won the U.S. Open, All Japan Championship and Mosconi Cup MVP in 2008, Immonen didn’t have the body of work that could be compared to Efren’s or Ralf’s. Also, up until he went title-wild in ’08, Immonen had had a roller-coaster ride of a decade, mixing euphoric highs with lows of unbelievable depth.

Take his international coming-out party: the 2001 World Pool Championships in Cardiff, Wales. Immonen got into the 128-player field thanks to a special guest invitation from Matchroom Sport. Immonen, just a 50-to-1 shot at the start, shot his way to the title (capping the run with a 17-10 win over Souquet in the final). But just three months later, at the ’01 U.S. Open, Immonen was on the opposite end of the most lopsided final in the event’s storied history, getting shutout, 11-0, by Corey Deuel.

Years later, the 2006 Mosconi Cup proved to be Immonen’s foil. Two balls from clinching just the third victory for Europe in 13 years, he badly misplayed shape on the 9 ball, eventually gifting the match to the U.S. on the way to an unceremonious tie. But just two years later, after being left off the victorious 2007 team, Immonen was unstoppable at the Mosconi Cup. He banished the demons of two years prior with an MVP performance, which culminated in another attempt — this one successful — on the Cup-clinching 9.

“After the depressing moments of the Mosconi Cup in ‘06, to come back and show that king of character, is something I can be very proud of,” Immonen said.

The momentum and confidence he reaped with his redemptive run in late 2008 carried over into the next year. Without any notable wins early on, the Finn was absolutely invincible in the back half of 2009. He won, in order, the Qatar Open, Galveston World Classic 10-ball division, U.S. Open, Challenge of Champions and World 10-Ball Championship. Immonen, taking enough titles in six months that would be a decade’s worth of accomplishments for almost every pro not yet mentioned, won five of the year’s seven biggest first-place prizes.

The streak, as it turns out, was just enough to put Immonen just ahead of the other three. In fact, remove those last two months of 2009, when he won the U.S. Open and World 10-Ball Championship, and Immonen may drop to second or third on the decade’s best list. But those victories — becoming the first back-to-back champion in Chesapeake since Nick Varner in 1990 and winning his second WPA-sanctioned world championship of the decade — were exactly what he needed to distance himself (by just a hair) from the pack.

“Of course, to think realistically, I could have not expected to have a streak like this,” Immonen said. “I almost feel like I subconsciously somehow tricked my mind to think I [was] destined to do it.”

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