Eight-ball: Bay kingpin's year to remember

Dean Garnett (left) and Brent Wells with their silverware at the weekend after winning their third national pairs title this year. Photo/Supplied

Hawke's Bay cueist Dean Garnett has created history with his latest two national eight-ball titles.

Havelock North's Garnett, 51, and his Palmerston North partner Brent Wells won the national chartered clubs pairs title in Christchurch at the weekend with a 5-3 win against Otago's Daniel Bowen and Canterbury's Rob Tipa in the final. Last month they won the national Commercial Travellers Clubs title at the Bay City Club in Napier.

Wells and Garnett, who won the North Island pairs title in Wellington in June, are the first pair to have won all three titles in the same year.

"This is the third year Brent and I have played together. He is an easy-going player to play with and that's half the key. We seem to play very well together," Garnett explained.

They were among 113 pairs in the Christchurch tournament which they won with an unbeaten run, including all five of their section play matches. They had the bye for the first round of post-section play after qualifying as the fourth seeds and had to win their last 32 (4-1), last 16 (4-2), last eight (5-4) and semifinal (5-3) matches before taking on Bowen and Tipa in the final.

"This is the first time we've won this tournament. It was first played in 1978 and to have all three titles we have in the same year is pretty special," Garnett said.

They were among 32 pairs in the Napier tournament which they also won with an unbeaten run. While Wells had won the tournament previously with another partner it was the first time the Heaphy Billiards-sponsored Garnett had played in it.

They beat Hamilton's Ivan Noda and Mick Karam in the final.

"Basically we entered it to get some matchplay before going to Christchurch," Garnett explained.

Add the North Island singles title he won in June as well as the Glenn Love Memorial singles title in Upper Hutt he captured in August and it's fair to say 2018 must rank as the most memorable of the 10 years the Zeagold Foods truck driver has spent chasing tournaments in New Zealand. He first started playing in Britain as a 12-year-old.

Before this year's successes the previous highlight for the Taradale Club player was winning the $5000 first prize at the Levin Classic in 2016. After his June double Garnett stated he still had a couple of major work-ons - finding enough time to play and improving his break.

"You have a bad break in eight-ball and you lose ... simple as that," Garnett said at the time.

Supporters of Garnett have confirmed he is definitely playing plenty of tournaments and his breaks have improved as a result of that regular matchplay.

Garnett has three more major tournaments before the end of the year. They are the Levin Open Singles at Labour Weekend, the Gold Coast Singles in Paraparaumu and the Taradale Club's Open Pairs on the weekend of November 10 and 11.

Seventy pairs have entered the Taradale tournament and Garnett is aiming for a sixth consecutive win. Wells and Garnett won the tournament last year and in 2016 and during the previous three years Garnett won the title with fellow Hawke's Bay player and Clubs New Zealand 2013 national champion Bayden Jackson.

"It would be good to win six but it will be tough ... everyone wants to beat us now," he added.