Cookie monster was brutal to play. VERY methodical grind-it-out style, a LOT like Varner. He never did stupid shit and would play as long as it took.
I spent something like four hours with Cook and if I had lived around Dayton I would have spent several more sessions with him. It was years ago when Gail's mother was suffering through the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and we were making frequent trips to Dayton. I met him on one of our trips at Airway Billiards and he gave me his home phone number in case I was ever in town and wanted to play.
He offered lessons at $25 an hour but if you went for two hours, he'd go three. In all honesty, the lessons weren't much in terms of a formal structure. It was more of an opportunity to play the man -- a bona fide 1pocket legend -- and ask him anything I wanted. So I tried to take advantage of the opportunity and pick his brain: why did you choose that shot instead of that one; what would you do here; is it better to go behind the stack, or up table in this situation; how do you hit that shot...
In between games of 1pocket and my endless stream of questions, he told me road stories, talked about other players he'd known and lamented that he'd lost the knack of playing straight pool, "Can't see the patterns anymore." I would say hello to him each year at the US Open One Pocket Tournament, when that event was running up in Kalamazoo, MI and one year we warmed up playing for small stakes. He was a soft spoken gentleman who had moved back to Lima, OH (from FL?) to take care of his mother. He was one of the greatest pool players of all time. And when I told Gail that "the Cookie Monster" had passed, she knew who I was speaking of and said, "Oh no. How sad."
Yes, it was.
IMO, Steve Cook was toughest guy of that era. A total 1pocket surgeon who was so good -- he'd take you apart and you never felt a thing.
Lou Figueroa
