Okay Ken. Ronnie was the best combination shooter ever! He could make those off angle combos like they were straight in. Ronnie was the most creative One Pocket player ever, finding fantastic shots out of the stack that no one else could see, often having to kick into the stack to make them. He shot shots (and made them) that no one else would shoot at (or even see).
His ability to kick three rails out of traps was a wonder to behold. He could be in a dead trap and turn the game around with an amazing kick shot. Again no one else has these shots or even knows them. I saw it over and over again with my own eyes. He also kicked two long rails more successfully than anyone else ever. Kicking one rail was child's play for him.
Ronnie's ability to move multiple balls toward his pocket was also beyond belief. You thought you had him behind the pack, and he would shoot a ball off the side rail to the end rail and into a cluster of balls. All of a sudden it looked like the table was tilted toward his hole, with all the balls rolling that way. If one of those balls happened to fall in, game over!
Ronnie ran ten and out more than any living human and did it from ungodly spots. Often he had to make four or five miracle shots to continue the run.
The bigger the bet the better he played! If you both needed one ball to win, you were dead. Ronnie's shooting percentage on game ball shots was something like 99%. He just never seemed to miss anything when it was for the match - super thin cut shot, difficult bank shot, it made no difference.
His end game was superb! If you were down to the last three balls, both needing two, he had you!
The last thing Island Drive also touched on. No one was more a master of the conversation than Ronnie, both before, during and after a match. He would compliment an opponent on a fine shot, study the pack for a minute or two, kick a ball in and then run out. He would then explain he had no choice but to go for the awkward kick shot since he was trapped, winking at me on the sidelines.
Ronnie told me more than once, that he won so much money in his life by giving up the nuts and outrunning them. And he did too!
There's probably more but I touched on the highlights. It's no accident that no one wanted to play him even for twenty years with only two exceptions that I know of - Bugs and Marvin Henderson (who also beat Ronnie once and wouldn't give him a rematch).
