The Story Martin Mulkerrins’s 2022/23 Race 4 Eight Season
Tucson, AZ, WPH Press, 5/22/23
Martin Mulkerrins entered the 2022/23 Race 4 Eight season with a singular goal, to accomplish what his countrymen Charly Shanks, Paul Brady, and Killian Carroll had done before him – win the year-end Player’s Cup for the season’s number one player.
Coming off a dominant 2022 Player’s Championship victory that saw Mulkerrins throttle Lucho Cordova in the semifinals and Killian Carroll in the final, Mulkerrins was brimming with confidence entering the ten-event 2022/23 Race 4 Eight season. Mulkerrins dominated the 2022/23 season’s first stop at the Portland Classic R48LTE, lost in the final of the 2022 Memorial, lost in the semifinal of the 2022 R48 Icebreaker and won the 2023 Mardi Gras R48LTE and stood just decimal points from the number one ranking for the first time.
Mulkerrins advanced to the final of the tour’s next stop at the R48 Red Death Montana, officially clinching the number one ranking with Lucho’s semifinal Red Death loss. Mulkerrins served at 14-10 in the first game of the final against Killian Carroll, knowing that a win would not only give him his fourth Race 4 Eight title, but also a comfortable points lead against Cordova. In a deja vu scenario that saw Mulkerrins also leading Carroll in the 2020 Red Death final 14-10, Mulkerrins could not score the final point, losing 16-14 in both instances. Just as in the 2020 R48 Red Death, Carroll seized the momentum and dominated game two.
Mulkerrins’s next chance to widen the gap at number one would come at the next stop two weeks later in Houston. Mulkerrins entered Houston as the R48’s number one player for the first time and faced Carroll in the semifinals in the upper bracket. Mulkerrins led Carroll 14-10 again in the first game, only to see the lead evaporate. Unlike in Montana, Mulkerrins did not allow the momentum to be shifted, as he dominated Carroll 15-1 in game two in six minutes. Tied at six in the tiebreaker, Carroll found the hot hand, scoring nine of the final ten points of the match to steal another opportunity from Mulkerrins.
The semifinal loss in Houston cost Mulkerrins the number one ranking but he was very much still alive for the Player’s Cup entering Tucson’s Hall of Fame R48LTE in April. Mulkerrins faced Sean Lenning in the bottom bracket quarterfinal, with a title in Tucson pulling him close to Cordova in the rankings. Mulkerrins led 15-8, 14-10, but for the third time in two months, could not score the fifteenth point with a 14-10 lead, surrendering match point and losing in a tiebreaker.
Mulkerrins still had a chance to complete his Player’s Cup dream in Salt Lake City at the Aces Player’s Championship, but Lenning squashed his dreams with a two-game win in the bottom bracket quarterfinals, leaving Mulkerrins to ponder what could have been on his first full season on tour.
As Yogi Berra famously said in 1973, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
The Year of the Comeback HERE
2022/23 Year End Race 4 Eight Rankings HERE
2022/23 Race 4 Eight Year End Awards HERE
David Fink
WPH Senior Writer