A Queenstowner’s become the first pool player to claim every New Zealand title with his two latest wins.

In emotional scenes, Simon Singleton this month won the national 10-ball and 9-ball tournaments, beating outright favourite Matt Edwards — who’d beaten him about nine times out of 10 in those formats over the previous six years — in both finals.

Ironically, Singleton hadn’t intended contesting either event.

However, he’d been in Auckland for the funeral of friend Molrudee Kasemchaiyanan, NZ’s best female player who’d sponsored him, and who, along with Edwards, had originally talked him into playing 9-ball.

And the first of those back-to-back tournaments started in Auckland just two days later.

The 39-year-old had last played 9-ball in June, when he’d teamed up for the second time with Edwards to contest the World Cup of Pool in England, where they’d lost in the first round to Germany.

To snatch his latest titles, he won all of his seven games at the 10-ball tournament and all eight at the 9-ball one.

Explaining his success, he says ‘‘I would probably say it was having no pressure’’.

‘‘’Cos I wasn’t supposed to be playing, I just went in with a fresh mindset of just enjoying it.

‘‘It’s like fate, really, because I wouldn’t have played if it hadn’t been for the funeral.’’

Singleton’s now racked up NZ titles in 8-ball, 9-ball and 10-ball, won national club singles and pairs titles and won the superleague nationals in 8-ball.

Making the feat special is he’s dominated on both small and large tables — ‘‘not a lot of players do the crossover’’.

The wins also make up somewhat for his disappointment with his world cup performance, gives him more confidence and ‘‘silences the critics a little bit’’.

Next week he plays the club nationals singles and pairs in Tauranga before the 8-ball nationals in Dunedin at Labour Weekend.

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