And I guarantee you this, the skills are so even matched by the way that I would put money that the top pool players in the world could train with a great coach and be in the money on the PGA tour, and vice versa. Tiger Woods would be one of the best pool players on the planet if he really learned to play. The main most important factor in linking the two sports in skill set, is the mental aptitude for it.
Grey Ghost
I don't think you or anyone else, including me, can 'guarantee' (or rule out) anything but you're particularly stretching things a bit to suggest that it is guaranteed that top pool players in the world could win cash on the PGA Tour with simply the right coaching. If that were true some of them would amost certainly already be doing precisely that and by identifying such a unique method of easily finding golfers who will cash on the PGA Tour you could, if you wanted to, become the millionaire owner of a sports management company to rival IMG and the others. There are thousands, possibly tens of thousands of +3/+4/+5/+6 handicap amateurs of exceptional golf talent in addition to countless golf pros of immense talent (all of whom are exposed to extensive coaching in addition to their established inherent talent) who fail to get anywhere near even getting on the PGA Tour, let alone cashing....and some of them are pretty tough mentally. Whether we pool players like to think of this way or not Pro pool is a very small pond in which to be a big fish when compared to the ocean that is pro golf.
The realistic mathematical chances of even one (let alone several) of let's say the world's current top 500 pool pros being able after coaching to get into a cashing position on The PGA Tour are in my opinion exceptionally slim. To say that you can guarantee it is certainly a bold statement.
That being understood, you'd get no argument from me about the more generalised and far less ambitious contention of it being very likely that people with proven good hand-eye coordination and timing skills in the topmost level of one sport involving a ball or balls will have the basic ammunition to make it very possible for them to become exceptionally competent in other ball sports.
I'm in my 50's and over a 40 year time span I'm an ex semi-pro soccer player, ex first division rugby player, ex pro english 8 ball player, now 1 handicap golfer who didn't lift a golf club til I was 46 years old.......and have never had any lessons or coaching at either pool or golf...... so the general principle of the adaptability of those basic coordination and timing skills applies even at very much lower and less talented levels than found at the top, lol. It is also evident that coaching isn't always the be all and end all that some people think it is.
When my day to day profession allows me the free time and opportunity I caddy occasionally on The European PGA Tour, including for example for Danny Lee (though not in this week's event) and have some first hand experience of all kinds of mental attitudes in Pro golfers. I also agree that having the right mental make-up is crucial to the topmost level players of pool and golf......but that applies equally to many other sports and while I can certainly see where it's coming from I've never really bought wholly into this concept which some others have put forward in the past of there being a closer 'link' between pool and golf than between many other sports and golf. I also don't buy into the concept of pro pool players being significantly mentally tougher than most top exponents of their sports.
I firmly believe that in most sports possession of an inherently talented and natural set of hand-eye coordination and timing skills is more important than mental aptitude because it is in general easier to compensate for the shortcomings in the latter through possession of the former than vice-versa. That is not to devalue the possession of mental aptitude because I certainly agree that it is vital for consistent success at any level.
Discussion of the relative 'difficulty' in mastering the technical and mental skills necessary to play at the top levels of pool and golf respectively have been done to death on here over and over again and I've no intention of getting into an argument over something that cannot be definitively proved either way. They are after all two very different games. I love both games and given some practice can still play pool to a standard that most people closely familiar with the mechanics of both games would consider to be roughly the pool equivalent of a 1 handicap golfer. I have a lot to learn about both games as most people have. However with reference to your implication that I might be favouring golf because of some significant difference in my own knowledge or skill level of the two games I can only say that this isn't so and that whatever else I may be doing wrong I'm definitely not approaching the subject from a position of bias or comparative ignorance of one game over the other. I'm more or less equally skilful or equally incompetent or equally dumb or equally knowledgeable.....about both, take your pick lol.
I do fully realise that you are only saying the skill levels involved in golf and pool are roughly level. I personally can't agree. As regards the top guys, from memory I've yet to see or hear a top pro pool player who is also a very low handicap golfer state that pool skills are more difficult to master in a physical/technical sense than golf skills. I have noticed that John Schmidt for example, though he doesn't come down very strongly on this, has in the past expressed thoughts which are generally in line with the thrust of what I personally have come to believe only after many years of mulling over the question. I do think however that John and several other golfing pool pros would have a wry smile at your contention that you could guarantee them cashing on the PGA Tour if they had the right coaching.
No offence was intended to any pool player by the sentence in my earlier post which dealt with this subject and no doubt other azb'ers will have good reasons why their opinions are different to mine. As I suggested earlier there will never be concensus on this and I have no wish to try to change anyone's mind.
