Wow, Danny Medina. That’s a name one doesn’t hear often. Played with him when growing up in Denver years ago. He was older than me and the one thing I remember most is that he was such a good dude. Oh, and a PHENOMENAL player too. Better not leave out that little detail.
What's the rule on players talking during a match?
- Thread starter straightline
- Start date
I was in a place I hit balls in almost every night. Danny was on the road in a strange place. Danny was using his own stick and I was using a house cue but I had three or four house cues in there that I knew well. I didn't finish that session with the feeling I was the better player, I think it was genuinely too close to call and I was near my best playing days, maybe in them. I was getting known a bit in the pool underground and road players were starting to come looking for me.
I came out on top of Johnny Archer too about then but that was a strange session. He had three magic breaks calling the pocket eight ball then the eight ball that had been slow rolling in the side stopped a gnat's ass shy. After that I ran a few racks then started letting him swing a stick once or twice a rack most racks but I wasn't leaving any shots. Sounds funny on AZB but I had never heard of Johnny back then and was afraid of running him off if I broke and ran too much. As it happened I won an even dozen games in a row but it was hard to say I played Johnny. He dominated, then I dominated, but we never really mixed it up. We didn't get in a shooting battle or a safety battle. It wouldn't have mattered whose butt was polishing a chair.
Crazy as it sounds, Johnny won the coin toss, made three called pocket eights on the break, and never made another ball. It was winner breaks and Johnny intimidated me, I had never seen three eights on the break strung and didn't know how many more he might string if I let him break once! Johnny did that when he walked in the door. Later Johnny tried an eight rail Z kick on a bar table with at least ten balls still on the table. Would have made it had the object ball not ran out of gas in the jaws. Remains the damnedest shot I have ever seen in competition including on video. I spent a couple hours trying to duplicate it several times even with only three balls on the table and never came close. He hit every rail once and two twice.
Hu
Not a Z and only 7 but the only one I can picture. Note the big ball. 
The cue ball was about an inch from the middle of the foot rail. It was touching one of my balls with one or two more of my balls blocking a kick in one direction forcing a kick into the head rail to start things off. From there into the left side rail, right side rail, left side, right side, not sure just working in my head how it went back and forth around the side pocket but it was around there that it doubled up hitting an extra side rail on each side. Back across both sides once more before just kissing the head rail and kicking into the fifteen ball that was less than an inch off the head rail about an inch off of the left diamond. A kid scribbling with a color would have the cue ball path about right!(grin)
One of these days I am going to find some software I am comfortable with to try to diagram it. Johnny spent about two minutes holding his stick over the table laying out the shot so no accident. Not the shot I anticipated. He could make a legal two rail kick into one of his balls in front of the side pocket or corner pocket but I had balls blocking both pockets. Seven or eight rail zee kicks weren't even on my radar!
Hu