Spain’s Jonas Souto

Is The Diamond Billiard’s SBE 2023 Pro Player Open Champion

Story by SKIP MALONEY - AzB Staff / Photos by ERWIN DIONISIO

Of the 56 competitors who signed on to the Open 9-Ball Pro Players Championship at the Super Billiards Expo this past weekend (April 13-16), Spain’s Jonas Souto was not on many people’s list as a presumed favorite.

That designation was assigned to Scotland’s Jayson Shaw who came to Oaks, PA to defend the title he’d won last year when he defeated his friend Darren Appleton in the 2022 finals. Souto defied the ‘presumed favorite’ odds and spoiled the two-in-a-row party for Shaw, downing him in a five-set, 40-game final match that took a little over three hours.

The 56-entrant field this year lacked a bit of 2022’s firepower. Though Appleton was present, primarily man- ning his Dynamite Billiards booth this year, he remains on the mend, following a serious heart attack in January, and did not compete. Neither (from 2022) did Fedor Gorst, Billy Thorpe, Ralf Souquet or Thorsten Hohmann among others. Returning from last year’s championship (in addition to Shaw) were John Morra, Jonathan Pinegar, Kang Lee, Warren Kiamco and Earl “The Pearl” Strickland, all of whom finished among the top 16 in the 2022 event.

In defying the ‘odds-against’ him, Souto played three of those returning veterans; Kiamco, then Morra, and in the end, Shaw. He entered the finals having survived a quarterfinal, double-hill (set) battle against Kiamco and a relatively easier 3-1 win over Morra (5-4, 2-5, 5-3, 5-2).

Shaw played four matches to get into the finals and three of them were 3-0 set victories. The only real ‘trouble’ he ran into was against ‘young gun’ Shane Wolford, who battled him to