My 75 year old aunt had never really payed attention to pool. She wants to see me play. A group of cousins, myself and my aunt hit a bar. She tells me to "play hard and don't clown around." After easily winning 3 easy games in a row, she has this comment... "I see what you are doing. You don't do anything special, you just pick the easy balls every game." WOW! Perception is everything! Having no idea that I'm controlling the cue ball, she simply saw that I picked the easy shots and my opponent picked the hard ones. Those who don't enjoy pool on TV may just see it the same way. Strange view. Enlightening.
That has always and will always be the problem with pool from a public perspective. It looks easy.
Golf for example to someone like me looks really hard and it is played on such a large scale. Even the simplest putt, the crowd gets quiet and he stands over the shot and then strokes it in to response of the crowd. It may have been a putt he would make 99 out of a 100 but it still has a drama to it. They all look hard to me.
This may explain some of the fascination with the trick shots by non players. They look not only hard but in some cases impossible, like a magic trick. There is nothing that can be done about this it is the nature of the game. The better it is played the less impressive it is.
You will even see it on here and this is a forum of pool players. I am referring to thread that starts with,
"Watching one pocket is like watching paint dry". Or "One pocket is too slow, I can't stand the game".
I on the other hand can watch one pocket for hours, it is my favorite game to watch. Most all of my videos are one pocket matches.
One has to understand what they are seeing to appreciate it.
Unfortunately, with pool, the general public will never understand the game, nor do they care to. So they watch a few trick shots and that keep their attention for a short time then when they have seen enough they get board and move on. That is just the way it is.