Tom Jennings (born 1951) is an American professional
pocket billiards
Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the , into which balls are deposited. "Pool billiards" is sometimes hyphenated and/or spelled with a singular "billiard". The WPA itself uses "pool-billiard" in ...
(pool) player and
mathematics professor. He won the
BCA U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship in 1976 and 1977, being the first player since
Steve Mizerak
Stephen Mizerak Jr. (October 12, 1944 – May 29, 2006), better known as Steve Mizerak, was an American pool player, considered one of the all-time greats, dominant during the 1970s and early 1980s in the game of Straight Pool, holding over 70 to ...
to win consecutive championships.
He won both titles while also a full-time mathematics professor at
Middlesex County College in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...
.
Early years
At 17 years of age, Jennings was a highly skilled player who claimed to be capable of making runs of 300.
Career
In August 1976, despite having never won a single match in four prior
BCA U.S. Open Straight Pool Championships, Jennings was victorious in the
straight pool
Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a cue sport in which two competing players attempt to as many billiard balls as possible without playing a . The game was the primary version of pool played in profession ...
(14.1 continuous) championship held in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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.
In 1977, the tournament was held in
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater ...
in September. Jennings was not positioned well for a repeat performance. He lost in the first match of the
double elimination tournament
A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...
to
Tom Kollins
Tom or TOM may refer to:
* Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name)
Characters
* Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head''
* Tom Beck, a character ...
by a score of 150–135. He won the next five matches easily, and earned the right to play
Dick Lane in the championship match.
[The championship was played where the winner being the first to score 200 points. Lane was a formidable opponent, having made a run of 111 points earlier in the tournament. After 19½ innings, Lane was in a 64-point run and was leading by a score of 196–42, four points away from the championship. On the 65th shot of his run, Lane missed the break, giving Jennings an opening. Jennings returned immediately with a 71-point run of his own (his personal best for the tournament), which closed the gap to 196–113. The two mostly traded for ten more innings, during which time Lane only sank a single additional ball while Jennings inched his way closer to Lane's score. With the score at 197–171 after 30 innings, Jennings put together a final run of 29 points to seal his second consecutive US Open championship. Jennings' 158 points to Lane's 1 over the last eleven and a half innings has been called "Billiards' Biggest Comeback."]
Titles
* 1976 Maine 14.1 Championship
* 1976 BCA U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship
* 1977 BCA U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jennings, Tom
Living people
American pool players
1951 births