OK parents, stand up, testify! You have an athletically gifted child. What are the top three things you want to see your child do? Top ten, twenty?
Either people have family in a pool business or they blunder into the game/sport in the US. Nobody aims a young person at a pool career for reasons both real and fancied. I haven't looked lately but look at the hundredth ranked golfer, or pretty much any other legitimate sport. Then look at the tenth ranked pool player.
Why in the world would a parent want a child to enter the pool world with the dangers and risks real or imagined? I never mentioned I played pool fairly seriously at family gatherings. Invariably one of my cousins would mention it as back then I was the best most recreational players had ever seen. That isn't really saying a lot, before the information age the average recreational player sucked. Two or three aunts or great aunts would ask me if I was a pool hustler. I had to explain that you didn't have to be some sort of unsavory character to play pool. In the early seventies I had a handful of skills. Even circle track racing offered far better chances of success than pool. Few pursuits had the admitted occupational hazards that existed in much of the pool world either.
One of the biggest problems with pool in the USA is that it doesn't attract the elite competitors. In the Philippines many have paved the way to fame and fortune playing pool so the fairly small country produces outstanding pool players. My own state is a poor state, poor enough that malnutrition is often an issue resulting in small statues in some areas. The result of small statues and decent abilities otherwise, world class jockeys!
When we see pool players able to safely make the kind of income that other individual athletes make we will see US pool players the equal of anyone in the world. Until then, we see the occasional sport like Shane. He picked a pursuit where hearing wasn't an issue. I think pool was a family business too.
There were twin forces driving my interest in pool in my early teens. One was drinking on other people's money! The other thing is I was very possibly the world's second worst pool player. I stunk! It was six months before I could break even playing for beers in bars. Being that lousy at anything I liked doing simply wasn't acceptable. Another two years and I was pretty fair. Then I realized that I had been focusing on the wrong balls. The white one was the one that mattered most and that I had the most control over! I outgrew the thrill of watching the cue ball spin pretty early too. I sat at the counter watching the old men play a lot. They were usually playing something besides straight pool but these old men had all learned playing straight pool. A straight pool style game was a huge advantage if the game involved a cue, balls, and pockets.
We would benefit from a different primary game than eight or nine ball, ten either. If the games discouraged banging early on we would have better players too. Pool, all of the cue sports, started out as battle simulations, war games. If we remembered the idea is to win the war, not single fights,(shots) we would be better off.
We need to play physically better, we need to play smarter too. Even our best tend to travel the cue ball far too much. When high run records are attempted, notice how play changes?
We need to make changes. The first one we need is a format that the top sixty-four, the top thirty-two at the very least, can make a comfortable living at. After expenses the vast majority of pro players in the US would be better off flipping burgers at McDonalds. We may finally be seeing this change. Time will tell. Meantime, Emily take care of yourself. We need you right where you are at!
Hu
