Biloxi Boy said:

It is all relative -- what are the pocket sizes? "Bucket mouths" would make a big difference.

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patmoran said:

Keith remained in prime form through the 80s. Color of Money in 85 fueled more drive and confidence to wear the World gets the ,8. The pool world was much smaller then and started to change with the Filipino invasion followed by Europeans, Orientals and others.
In watching hundreds of tournaments at HT in the nineties and speaking with those in the know I heard often Keith was past his prime and a half ball behind the world class players which is nothing to be ashamed of because you are capable of beating anyone on a given day.
Keith was a money player foremost and I am sure if you compared his tournament winnings to his net earnings gambling it wouldn't be close. He could have negotiated out of those rule changes in arranging a gambling match. And he played all games where these rule changes don't matter.
I love this generation of players and how the globalization has raised the level of play, popularity and prize money. The prize money in the U.S. Open went from $8500 in 1980 to $41000 in 1990 to ,$211,000.in 2000 to half million today. The World 9 ball this year had a million dollar purse. Of course you have to be an elite player to cash in, cover expenses and make a profit. There are so many stone cold killers today, many unknown. They don't miss often and on much tighter pockets than the buckets of the early years. Players in the UK who grew up.playing snooker found nine ball easy and after learning the nuances like safety play were able to compete at the highest levels.
Hats off to SVB for all the success he has had and money won during his career during the toughest era in pool.
Do you think he wishes he played during the ,"glory years," of the 70s and 80s considering the paltry payouts,?
The American players in the 80s shot themselves in the foot when they refused to join forces with the women to form one tour that would have raised the profile and prize money in pool. Some resented foreign.players thinking this is a tour for Americans.
I realize how nostalgic and reminiscent of the past people can be. Think Springsteen's Glory Days. Let's be real though this era of pool is played at a higher level.

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boogieman said:

I got tons of black marks on the balls. I applied mink oil weekly for about 2 months and they no longer leave black marks.

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bbb said:

you just ran a rack of 10 ball
thats pretty good

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JAM said:

I went on the road during that era with a true road warrior, mostly down South, and even found myself in a couple of action games. One in Greensboro, North Carolina stands out. The place was nothing but action, wall to wall tables, and it was there I saw something I’ll never forget: Seattle Sam Trivett crawling up on a table on all fours to make a shot. I laughed so hard I couldn’t control myself, had to run outside just to catch my breath.

The bars down South back then weren’t like today’s sports bars. Each one seemed to have dozens of tables, sometimes even a snooker table. My road partner preferred the quieter pool rooms, but he didn’t have Keith’s kind of personality, the knack for reading a room, getting someone to play, and keeping the mood light while the cheese was on the line. That part of the hustle was left to me, and I learned quick how to get action with the best player in town.

It wasn’t all wins, either. We were walking into rooms blind, sometimes forced to play with a bent metal house cue. You’d never bring your own cue in the joint because it would give you away. And when the house pro showed up, well, the game was on. We won more than we lost, but I knew the Western Union phone number by heart. More than once we had to call home for money because he—or we—had gone bust.

Some memories still stand sharp:

• Having a gun pulled on me in Dalton, Georgia. Legal or not, I’ll never forget it.
• Watching a man sob in the parking lot, rent money gone, and feeling no joy in that win.
• Falling in with a steer in Alabama whose whole family stole meat for a living, even the kids. It made me uneasy.
• Seeing a wild ring game of 9-ball on a snooker table at Baker’s in Tampa, FL, one of the oldest poolrooms.
• Meeting Grady Mathews, driving a sharp Cadillac with a pit bull puppy riding shotgun, who took us to dinner and picked up the tab.
• Beating a girl out of $100 with adrenaline in my veins, and it was pure fun.
• Partying with carnival folks in Florida, some of the kindest, most genuine people I ever met on the road.

Oddly enough, it was through this same road warrior that I crossed paths with Keith years later. He had gone out to California, and Keith was his steer. Keith told me later some of those road stories gave him the hardest laughs of his life, like Geese flying alongside a car on the highway and joking, “I’ll just masse around this one up ahead.” You had to be there, but Keith thought he was hilarious.

For me, those golden years on the road were full of excitement because I was so deeply into pool, but after seeing a man crying in the parking lot over lost rent money, the thrill of laying down lemons to steal a win began to fade.

Keith and Scotty were thick as thieves. I remember Keith once disappeared for a week with Scotty during an IPT event in Reno, leaving Pots and Pan in his hotel room. To this day I don’t know what they got into, and I probably don’t want to. Their friendship, though, was rock solid. When Scotty lost his other half, Keith called him right away, knew he was short on cash, and asked me to drive him to Western Union where he wired Scotty $500 to get through the hard stretch.

That’s the kind of bond players of that generation shared. Through all the laughs, busts, and long nights, they built friendships that lasted a lifetime.

Photo I took July 2006 in Las Vegas. They clean up nice, don't they?

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Flakeandrun said:

Xue Zhenqi is a beast. Zhu Xihe is great to watch. He didn’t do so well against He though. The alternate break is a bitch. Ao Hongming is decent. Ma Chenchao a great Shanghainese player. Was really rooting for Fu to top filler but he blew it. Many of the top Chinese battled hard. A lot of them had to go through stage one. Lu Hui Chan, Kuo Po Cheng, Liu Ri Teng etc. I was surprised by the direct entries to stage two. Stage one was bloody strong field to begin with. So those players who qualified via that route will no doubt be fatigued

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