Saftey to clinch 6-2 season record, a personal best

This is a safety shot I made this past Monday night at Duke's. I was playing in the second match of the night, against a SL3, and was really under pressure to come through with a win because we were only going to have three players total (lots of people out of town). Peter, our SL7, had played first, winning his match six games straight vs a SL3. I won my lag, but as I recall after the break it was one of each down with no real shot on anything. I flubbed a difficult combination, handing an open table over to my opponent. Long story short, I lost the first game with four balls left on the table. Infuriated, I racked the balls and buckled down for the long, hard slog ahead of me (my opponent was on the hill, one win away, whereas I needed four wins). The second game was a little more even, my opponent was on the 8 ball and I still had two solids, but I played a safety and forced her to go for a difficult bank. She ended up making it into the wrong pocket, an S8 tying the match 1-1. At the end of the third game she whiffed on a shot, giving me ball in hand and an easy runout to make it 2-1. I don't remember how I won the fourth game, only that she was on the 8 at one point in it, a fairly easy cut shot but with an awkward reach over the table. She lined up for the shot, then had to back away from the table for a second to recompose herself, nervously fanning herself. She missed it and I ran out to make it 3-1, hill-hill. As I broke to start off the final game, I overheard behind me one of her teammates, who had lost to Peter and was now leaving the bar, say to my opponent (aloud), "Kick his ass." I kind of looked over at my team with a kind of "Was I supposed to hear that?" expression. Needless to say, it fired me up a bit. And so with one stripe left on the table, the 9 ball, I was forced with a dilemma (now you can go to the diagram above). As you can see, from C1, I could have cut the 9 ball into the upper left corner pocket. But that's not my kind of shot. If I was closer to it, then maybe I would have gone for it. But if I had missed she would have likely run out. Since the 8 ball was blocking the opposite corner, I knew that if I could pull off what I like to call a "trading places" safety with my 9 ball–hiding the cue ball behind it and blocking her view of her 7 ball–this would force her to go for that dangerous 5 ball. So I hit the cue ball with some follow and watched as the 9 ball rolled back downtable, perfectly eclipsing the 7 ball from where the cue ball came off the head rail. She looked it over and went for the full-table bank on the 5: a difficult inside angle with a potential double kiss of the cue ball off the side. And she almost made it, missing by only a few inches. So it was a bit of a gamble but it paid off big time, with a cinch of a runout for me. Once I made my 9 ball in the side pocket I heard her mutter to herself "C'est la vie" as I lined up for the easy 8. I wasn't the least bit upset that we lost our third and final match. Sure, it would have been cool to say "We won 3-2 with only three players present." But in the end, for all we brought to the table, we outscored them 11 games to 4. Barring any draw as a Wild Card in the playoffs, we resume league play September 21.