Back in 2016 I was in Qualifying tournament on southern Finland to spot for Darren´s World Pool Series to New York. Fedor was shooting some snooker after he dropped from tournament. I went and tried to get 50€ frames with him. He was doing 30-40+ breaks all the time.
Oh, for what might have been!Back in 2016 I was in Qualifying tournament on southern Finland to spot for Darren´s World Pool Series to New York. Fedor was shooting some snooker after he dropped from tournament. I went and tried to get 50€ frames with him. He was doing 30-40+ breaks all the time.
I was practicing snooker a lot too back then and was confident I could pull this out. He did not play.
I even pulled comments like: "Camoon, you are superstar im just a taxi driver from north"
Early 2017 I did my first 147
and good at chinese pool too.)
I know - a few people in this forum have the ability to think beyond six words - perhaps not enough people - perhaps why serious pool on 9 foot tables is almost non existent in the USA?It was a lot to read .
One of my local pool rooms has a mixture of 8' and 9' Gold Crowns. All of the tournaments and leagues are played on the 8' tables, and the regulars flock to them for friendly games as well. The rest of the rooms around here have almost all 7' Diamonds with a couple of 9'ers, and the 9' tables are almost exclusively used for one pocket or given to unsuspecting casual players who stroll in on a league night and can't find an open 7' table.
Yeah, that’s often the way it works. Those that it comes so easy to don’t have the passion / drive, whereas those that put in the long hours and would give anything to play well just don’t have that gift.
Yes, no question that Tyler would have been one of the top US players of his generation, possibly even challenging SVB. I saw him play in three consecutive BCA Junior nationals when my son was also competing in it.
Tyler was from Broken Arrow… hell of a player!
May have been living there at the time but he was from OkC. Him, Chip,Joey and Tyler's older brother David used to come to the Tulsa Billiard Palace a lot to gamble and play tournaments.
Some of the bar box players I see while playing on my big table in the corner, lol, have excellent mechanics. Idk why they choose to play on small tables unless they truly enjoy this or it's a social thing, or that's what they learned to play on, etc ...
but still -- I thought I could technically get there. Which was a nice comfortable thought to walk around with. You see, I just hadn't seen an extended display of world-class pool while standing table side. I'd seen some of the greats playing matches but a match setting can mask the overall talent. Unless of course you watch for a long time and you really know what you're watching.
great storyI'm not exactly answering the question from the perspective of first seeing the talent of an up and comer, instead I'll tell you about when I first saw elite talent up close and personal. Prior to this night, I thought I could reel in the greats IF I just put in the time. Now, in the back of my mind, I think I knew I wasn't willing to put in the necessary time
Anyway, I worked in a pool hall and the local great, who I got to know a bit and heard quite a few road stories from, also worked there. But he hadn't been playing a lot of pool at this time, until he sort of got the itch to play. I don't recall what piqued his interest, may have been the room owner wanting to stake him in the US Open. So he began intruding on my after hours practice time. It was always cool playing after hours because I'd turn off all the lights except for the table lights on the shimmed up table in the front of the room.
He had my speed gauged accurately and he gave me a few pointers here and there but one night he just asked if I would mind just racking for him for a bit while he played the 9 Ball Ghost. Now today's ghost is a totally different animal than the ghost played in the 90's. Today players get perfect racks and nice spreads. If you dial in the break you don't even have to deal with clusters. Not so back then with the wooden racks.
I would just rack them as good as an almost B player could and he would SMASH the rack and squat the cue ball. But I swear every single rack had a puzzle that had to be solved, a cluster that had to be nudged, or a crazy multi-rail positional route that the cue ball would have to travel. I placed those balls in that wooden triangle rack after rack, and watched him slide his coin around the entire table and then some while working through 13 racks in a row.
It was so far beyond anything I had seen accomplished on a pool table up until then. For him, it didn't seem like a big deal. His exact words have escaped my memory, but he said something about "getting closer to being back in stroke." It was all very sobering for this delusional pool player.
I enlisted in the Air Force a few months later.
Michigan's Nathan Haddad was a really good player that could have had a good career if "things" could have gone his way. He had his struggles but he always had a smile on his face.
Oh okay. He was always introduced from Broken Arrow… maybe because his mom lived there. Another kid that plays great right now is Adrian Prasad. He plays out of the Hard times in Sacramento.
Very true and today you will find very, very few newcomers to the game willing to invest the time, money, and dedication needed to become an excellent player on 9 foot tables. A shame since the internet provides so many more possibilities of learning the game correctly from day one - I never had anything close to that starting out mid 1960s but developed a love for the game that is lasting a lifetime and has been adopted by my own sons and hopefully their children.
