“Our long national nightmare is over…”
President Gerald R. Ford
inaugural speech, post Watergate
So finally, after months of build up, it’s done. The match has been played and we can all get back to doing whatever we should be doing.
I have to give props to John. He was tenacious and came with some great shots. To be frank, he played better than I expected he would. I cannot imagine how he felt after the match. In counter point to the high I experienced, his low must have been equally profound. I don’t care who you are, it must be extraordinarily difficult to internalize a defeat like this and he was extremely gracious after the match and held his head up, as well he should. My hat is off to him.
For me, even to this day, as I walk around my neighborhood to shop or get a a coffee, there is a spring in my step that I know would be absent if I had lost my match with John. Fair warning: if playing pool for a huge amount of money is not something you do on a regular basis, there is no way for you to anticipate the costs you may incur -- costs that will extend far beyond dollars and cents.
It is a funny thing: I flew back home and was pretty much numb the first few days. A couple of nights later back at the pool hall, people congratulated me, shook my hand and related watching the match from home, on their phone, or from the office in the back of the pool hall, either crowding around the computer screen or running back every so often to ask, “How’s Lou doing?” Gail, who was in Little Rock while the match was going on (and who hates 1pocket), sweated the entire first night, but tuned in too late to see all of the final game, so we watched it together at home. It was actually only until about a week later that I started to feel pretty good about winning.
Many people have said they have never watched that much 1pocket at one sitting (I am also told we approached 800 viewers at one point or another the first night). Of course they have also said they just couldn’t turn away — it was like a car wreck, with blood and body parts, ambulances, cop cars and fire department, with Ed, Freddy, and Jamison providing their insightful commentary. Thanks guys!
For those that say John and/or I played like crap, I would say to you that unless you are an amateur, who has played for $10,000, just one time, on a tight table that was foreign to you, in front of a live audience, with three cameras sending your every move out to the world: Girl, you have no idea.
Part of it, I think, is that we all get used to Efren, or SVB, or name the pro of your choice, rocketing balls in from everywhere and playing perfect shape, match after match, stream after stream, DVD after DVD. But for most of us, that’s not how we play, particularly when under the gun. I promise you: put yourself in the position John and I were in and every time you step to the table you will question everything you ever thought you knew about pool and your game. Shots you slice, dice, and whiz in at home for whatever amount of money you are comfortable with — fergetabout it. You will study and fret, and, in trying to be extra careful, you will fook up. And that’s one thing that has probably permanently changed for me — I now have an extremely low tolerance playing guys and watching them fire at shots I know they would never roll at playing for larger stakes.
Somewhere along the way John said, "…kudos to Lou. He is playing solid one hole and staying extremely calm outwardly. Whatever zen thing he has going on in his head is working.” The Zen thing Lou had going on was all those years of going to tournaments and playing the likes of Efren, Scott, Alex, Francisco, Rafael, Larry, et al that John sometimes denigrates as me wasting my money and writing pretty stories about. Ultimately it was the pretty stories that came through for me, giving me the luxury of comfortably falling into my tournament zone. I’d been there so often that it was a safe place for me to go during the match. There, it didn’t matter what my opponent did, how long he took to shoot, whether the audience or his team clapped loudly for him, or I just screwed up.
So it’s done.
As he was shaking my hand after the match, Mike said, “You look like you’ve lost 20 pounds off your shoulders.” And I did. Dustin said, “You looked great out there, man. You made me proud.” And that’s the way I felt — proud my game held up well enough and long enough to crawl across the finish line. And when I finally got home and Gail kissed and hugged me she said, “So. This is what winner looks like. It’s great to have you back.” And I knew she was not talking about my physical presence, but that my mind was no longer focused on playing John Barton. I was free, released, and Lou again.
So I’m guessing some of you are wondering: will there be a rematch?
After due reflection, I would say probably not. It is not something I am interested in doing and frankly I have nothing to prove — not about whether I will show up to play, not about whether I can play for $10K, not about whether I can “get in the grease,” not about whether I am the better player, and certainly not about CTE. But, I’m not willing to say never, just: probably not.
As to the CTE stuff, right after the match John said he hopes we can bury the hatchet and asked if I’d be willing to meet with Stan at his house in Kentucky to learn more about CTE, Pro One, and how they really work. And I said, “No, I’m not. I have no interest in doing that.” And then he suggested meeting Stan somewhere halfway. And I again responded, “No.” John asked me why and I replied, “John, you can call it being closed minded if you want but I would no sooner go out to meet Stan to learn about CTE than I would go out to meet a guy who wanted to tell me about seeing Big Foot.” So without a doubt, that argument will go on into perpetuity.
I could not have done any of this without Mike and Dustin. Of course there were others like kollegedave, Arizona Jay, Terry and Mark, owners of The Break, and so many of you that, through emails and PMs, supported me. It was also great to meet Koop (thanks for the Yuengling beers — right after the match, they hit the spot!), Mitch, Jerry, Brian, and Mikey. Ed, you run a class operation.
But most importantly, I could not have done this without Gail. For Christmas, amongst my other gifts, were a stack of Accu-Stats 1pocket DVDs from the 2012 DCC and SBC that she gave me. DVDs I watched, paused and rewound in the weeks leading up to my match with John. I also received a copy of Mark Wilson’s “Play Great Pool” that she had ordered for me. With apologies to Mark I will do something I usually try and avoid and share, in part, a private note he included with the book: “Lou, yes, you have the best pool wife ever, she has sought out my book for you… Thank you for the interest, thank you Gail.” Well, how can I improve on that except to say, thank you, Gail. Thanks for putting up with me as I spun in circles; took time away from us to practice; for listening to me endlessly kevetch about what John would say about me.
It was about a week after the match when I was back home that Gail and I went out to dinner one night and she made the following confession to me. "I didn't want to tell you this before but about a month ago I went searching on AZ for details about your match with John. I felt like I was intruding on your world but I wanted to try and understand why you were so consumed with this match and beating him. And I came across a YouTube video of him in front of a pool table ranting at you for 10 minutes straight. And I started to cry because this man was saying the most horrible things about the man I was married to. And I finally understood."
I have one last quick story to wrap it up. I’m sharing this because amongst all the madness leading up to the match, it was a critical turning point for me, though I didn’t know it at the time.
In mid-February, while we were vacationing in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, late at night we would often find ourselves at out favorite bar at Del Mare, where Arturo, one of the great bartenders of the world, would hold court to an endless stream of American and Canadian tourists and ex pats. As usual the bar was full up and Gail and I fell into a conversation with a gentleman from Minnesota named Tim and somehow the subject of my upcoming match came up. Suddenly Tim looked me in the eye and asked me point blank, “Are you going to win?” And without hesitation I responded, “Yes. I’m going to win.” And Tim replied, “I know you are. In my business I often ask people, ‘Are you going to win, succeed, meet your goal?’ And I can tell by their response whether they’ll succeed or not. You responded without doubt. I know you’re going to win.”
And then he did what I thought was a weird thing. He turned to Gail sitting on the bar stool next to me, looked her in the eye and asked, “Is he going to win?” And Gail, in her usual, guarded manner said, “Well, I hope so.” And Tim shot back, “No. You have to believe in him, Gail. Do you see that woman at the end of the bar? She’s my wife and we were going to get married a few years ago. But I was near bankruptcy and I told her, ‘I don’t want to get married right now. I’m broke and I don’t know what our financial future will be.’ And she said to me, ‘I believe in you. You will succeed and I want to marry you.’ And that’s all it took and we got married and I’m a millionaire now. Gail, you’ve got to believe in Lou and you will fill him with enough love and confidence that he will.”
And from that night in February, Gail was a 100% behind me, listening to me, encouraging me, making me go out to practice, even when I didn’t feel like it.
So thank you, Gail. You believed in me.
Lou Figueroa
President Gerald R. Ford
inaugural speech, post Watergate
So finally, after months of build up, it’s done. The match has been played and we can all get back to doing whatever we should be doing.
I have to give props to John. He was tenacious and came with some great shots. To be frank, he played better than I expected he would. I cannot imagine how he felt after the match. In counter point to the high I experienced, his low must have been equally profound. I don’t care who you are, it must be extraordinarily difficult to internalize a defeat like this and he was extremely gracious after the match and held his head up, as well he should. My hat is off to him.
For me, even to this day, as I walk around my neighborhood to shop or get a a coffee, there is a spring in my step that I know would be absent if I had lost my match with John. Fair warning: if playing pool for a huge amount of money is not something you do on a regular basis, there is no way for you to anticipate the costs you may incur -- costs that will extend far beyond dollars and cents.
It is a funny thing: I flew back home and was pretty much numb the first few days. A couple of nights later back at the pool hall, people congratulated me, shook my hand and related watching the match from home, on their phone, or from the office in the back of the pool hall, either crowding around the computer screen or running back every so often to ask, “How’s Lou doing?” Gail, who was in Little Rock while the match was going on (and who hates 1pocket), sweated the entire first night, but tuned in too late to see all of the final game, so we watched it together at home. It was actually only until about a week later that I started to feel pretty good about winning.
Many people have said they have never watched that much 1pocket at one sitting (I am also told we approached 800 viewers at one point or another the first night). Of course they have also said they just couldn’t turn away — it was like a car wreck, with blood and body parts, ambulances, cop cars and fire department, with Ed, Freddy, and Jamison providing their insightful commentary. Thanks guys!
For those that say John and/or I played like crap, I would say to you that unless you are an amateur, who has played for $10,000, just one time, on a tight table that was foreign to you, in front of a live audience, with three cameras sending your every move out to the world: Girl, you have no idea.
Part of it, I think, is that we all get used to Efren, or SVB, or name the pro of your choice, rocketing balls in from everywhere and playing perfect shape, match after match, stream after stream, DVD after DVD. But for most of us, that’s not how we play, particularly when under the gun. I promise you: put yourself in the position John and I were in and every time you step to the table you will question everything you ever thought you knew about pool and your game. Shots you slice, dice, and whiz in at home for whatever amount of money you are comfortable with — fergetabout it. You will study and fret, and, in trying to be extra careful, you will fook up. And that’s one thing that has probably permanently changed for me — I now have an extremely low tolerance playing guys and watching them fire at shots I know they would never roll at playing for larger stakes.
Somewhere along the way John said, "…kudos to Lou. He is playing solid one hole and staying extremely calm outwardly. Whatever zen thing he has going on in his head is working.” The Zen thing Lou had going on was all those years of going to tournaments and playing the likes of Efren, Scott, Alex, Francisco, Rafael, Larry, et al that John sometimes denigrates as me wasting my money and writing pretty stories about. Ultimately it was the pretty stories that came through for me, giving me the luxury of comfortably falling into my tournament zone. I’d been there so often that it was a safe place for me to go during the match. There, it didn’t matter what my opponent did, how long he took to shoot, whether the audience or his team clapped loudly for him, or I just screwed up.
So it’s done.
As he was shaking my hand after the match, Mike said, “You look like you’ve lost 20 pounds off your shoulders.” And I did. Dustin said, “You looked great out there, man. You made me proud.” And that’s the way I felt — proud my game held up well enough and long enough to crawl across the finish line. And when I finally got home and Gail kissed and hugged me she said, “So. This is what winner looks like. It’s great to have you back.” And I knew she was not talking about my physical presence, but that my mind was no longer focused on playing John Barton. I was free, released, and Lou again.
So I’m guessing some of you are wondering: will there be a rematch?
After due reflection, I would say probably not. It is not something I am interested in doing and frankly I have nothing to prove — not about whether I will show up to play, not about whether I can play for $10K, not about whether I can “get in the grease,” not about whether I am the better player, and certainly not about CTE. But, I’m not willing to say never, just: probably not.
As to the CTE stuff, right after the match John said he hopes we can bury the hatchet and asked if I’d be willing to meet with Stan at his house in Kentucky to learn more about CTE, Pro One, and how they really work. And I said, “No, I’m not. I have no interest in doing that.” And then he suggested meeting Stan somewhere halfway. And I again responded, “No.” John asked me why and I replied, “John, you can call it being closed minded if you want but I would no sooner go out to meet Stan to learn about CTE than I would go out to meet a guy who wanted to tell me about seeing Big Foot.” So without a doubt, that argument will go on into perpetuity.
I could not have done any of this without Mike and Dustin. Of course there were others like kollegedave, Arizona Jay, Terry and Mark, owners of The Break, and so many of you that, through emails and PMs, supported me. It was also great to meet Koop (thanks for the Yuengling beers — right after the match, they hit the spot!), Mitch, Jerry, Brian, and Mikey. Ed, you run a class operation.
But most importantly, I could not have done this without Gail. For Christmas, amongst my other gifts, were a stack of Accu-Stats 1pocket DVDs from the 2012 DCC and SBC that she gave me. DVDs I watched, paused and rewound in the weeks leading up to my match with John. I also received a copy of Mark Wilson’s “Play Great Pool” that she had ordered for me. With apologies to Mark I will do something I usually try and avoid and share, in part, a private note he included with the book: “Lou, yes, you have the best pool wife ever, she has sought out my book for you… Thank you for the interest, thank you Gail.” Well, how can I improve on that except to say, thank you, Gail. Thanks for putting up with me as I spun in circles; took time away from us to practice; for listening to me endlessly kevetch about what John would say about me.
It was about a week after the match when I was back home that Gail and I went out to dinner one night and she made the following confession to me. "I didn't want to tell you this before but about a month ago I went searching on AZ for details about your match with John. I felt like I was intruding on your world but I wanted to try and understand why you were so consumed with this match and beating him. And I came across a YouTube video of him in front of a pool table ranting at you for 10 minutes straight. And I started to cry because this man was saying the most horrible things about the man I was married to. And I finally understood."
I have one last quick story to wrap it up. I’m sharing this because amongst all the madness leading up to the match, it was a critical turning point for me, though I didn’t know it at the time.
In mid-February, while we were vacationing in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, late at night we would often find ourselves at out favorite bar at Del Mare, where Arturo, one of the great bartenders of the world, would hold court to an endless stream of American and Canadian tourists and ex pats. As usual the bar was full up and Gail and I fell into a conversation with a gentleman from Minnesota named Tim and somehow the subject of my upcoming match came up. Suddenly Tim looked me in the eye and asked me point blank, “Are you going to win?” And without hesitation I responded, “Yes. I’m going to win.” And Tim replied, “I know you are. In my business I often ask people, ‘Are you going to win, succeed, meet your goal?’ And I can tell by their response whether they’ll succeed or not. You responded without doubt. I know you’re going to win.”
And then he did what I thought was a weird thing. He turned to Gail sitting on the bar stool next to me, looked her in the eye and asked, “Is he going to win?” And Gail, in her usual, guarded manner said, “Well, I hope so.” And Tim shot back, “No. You have to believe in him, Gail. Do you see that woman at the end of the bar? She’s my wife and we were going to get married a few years ago. But I was near bankruptcy and I told her, ‘I don’t want to get married right now. I’m broke and I don’t know what our financial future will be.’ And she said to me, ‘I believe in you. You will succeed and I want to marry you.’ And that’s all it took and we got married and I’m a millionaire now. Gail, you’ve got to believe in Lou and you will fill him with enough love and confidence that he will.”
And from that night in February, Gail was a 100% behind me, listening to me, encouraging me, making me go out to practice, even when I didn’t feel like it.
So thank you, Gail. You believed in me.
Lou Figueroa
