An enlightening look at the modus operandi of the BCA and their first U.S. Open.
This article was originally published in 1975
Take a good look, much can be learned from the past.
A Thriving 10 Year Old
by Matt Racki III
But there were some anxious moments before the U.S. Open's 1966 debut
No one remembers it exactly the same way, of course. What they do agree on is that it hardly seems possible that a decade has passed since the BCA came up with a "showcase" for the game - the U.S. Open.
There had been other BCA tournaments, to be sure, mostly at places like Chicago's decrepit Navy Pier. It was a perfectly named setting for the event back in the mid-50s, but it soured the Congress on holding showcases for the game until the Open some 10 years later.
If Navy Pier was the place to take a financial bath, the BCA plunged right in - to the tune of about $80,000. And that's enough to make anybody want to forget about staging another disaster like that for a few years.
"There heart was in the right place, I'll say that much for them," said one BCA official. "The problem was that, if anything, they were too generous. We had a 64-man field, a 32-woman field and another field of 32 three-cushion players." The crunch was that BCA picked up the travel expenses for every one of them; hotel bills, meals, the works.
"They figured people would flock to Navy Pier and that BCA would at least get its money back. Well, the people didn't flock, they stayed away in droves. That lapping sound wasn't the waves from Lake Michigan, it was the sound of the BCA taking a nice warm bath."
In a way, that was the end of one era, the 1966 U.S. Open the beginning of another. In the interim, [high] class pocket billiards was nowhere. There was some action in Las Vegas and Johnston City to be sure but that was about it.
Said Mike Geiger, BCA president, "You've got to remember that back in the days before the U.S. Open, home billiard table sales were just about zero. Actually, the Open originally was intended to give table manufacturers a chance to display their wares as much as it was to give players a chance at some real money in a class tournament."
That's pretty much the way Bob Froeschle recalls it too. Froeschle, who's served as tournament director of every U.S. Open noted that "We wanted a showplace for sellers. Table sales were beginning to take off and the main thought behind coming up with a new event like The Open was to show people that billiards was something they could enjoy right in their own home. Naturally the BCA board of directors wanted to present the game in its best possible light, so we opted for the ballroom setting, with blazers for the players and so forth."
It's impossible to bestow "Father of the U.S. Open" status on one man, although not many would quarrel with giving Froeschle and Don Neer, former BCA executive secretary, a lion's share of the laurels.
The board of directors eventually made the final decision, but there was more than one skeptic in the crowd. After all, the Navy Pier disaster hadn't been that long ago.
"One of the main concerns," Froeschle commented, "was that we were giving away too much in prize money. The top spot was worth $2500 and the runner-up got $1500, a far cry from what those two places will be worth next month.
Others felt that BCA shouldn't be sponsoring a tournament at all, that we should simply sanction it and get an outside sponsor. Well, they weren't beating down the door for the chance so BCA ended up putting on the first Open itself."
The 1966 Open was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Sherman House in Chicago, to better get across "the new image" the BCA would from then forth cultivate. About 20 manufacturers had set up displays in hopes of cashing in on the rising demand for home tables.
The biggest thing going for that first event, and something which hasn't happened since, was live TV. A Chicago UHF station beamed the finals, with "Whispering" Joe Wilson of Championship Bowling fame doing running commentary. BCA later edited the show and together with the station, sold it to several other TV outlets.
"It wasn't all sweetness and light," Froeschle recalls, " For instance we didn't have the overhead score projectors then; had to use kids not even in their teens as scorekeepers. We didn't even have official score pads. One thing I'll never forget is one of the kids falling asleep during the title game between Irving Crane and Joe Balsis. I guess he just got bored with the safeties and the fantastic way Crane was just making shot after shot.
We wanted to give the players a sort of "Tournament of Champions" that the golfers and bowlers had. At that time, you had all sorts of "World Champions" all over the place and that only confused the issue."
The players were enthralled by the whole affair, figuring pocket billiards was ready to make a flying permanent leap into the limelight. Perhaps, but Geiger recollects the player's attitudes a little differently.
"I don't think too many of them were all that excited about the size of the prize fund. Kind of funny when you remember that most of the BCA board felt even that much money was too much risk. I think Boston Shorty Johnson probably summed it up best. After it was over he said, 'I finished 10th and got a lousy hundred bucks. You mean to tell me being the 10th best pockets player in the world is only worth a miserable C-note?' I'll have to admit I think Shorty had a point."
Irv Nemecek Sr. of Kieckheffer Mfg Co [now Tweeten] in Chicago and a member of the BCA board at the time recalled that, "One of our biggest problems was raising money for the prize fund. We literally had to go hat in hand and scrape up what we could. But we did manage to get enough to come up with what most of us considered a decent prize fund.
"The U.S. Open was different from all previous tournaments in that we didn't just invite the 'stars' to take part. We had qualifying tournaments for each of the spots, something that rarely, if ever, had been done before. Before the first Open, most tournaments simply invited the hottest dozen or so biggies in hopes of insuring a big gate. But I can't fault them for that; that way you were almost always guaranteed a couple of stars in the final game."
Another BCA board member at the time, Bill Sheffer of Tweeten Fibre Co in Chicago said that "I was sort of lukewarm to the whole idea of an Open. I had seen big tournaments come and go many times before and I couldn't see the Open as being all that different.
The way I saw it, we were headed down the same old path of hundreds of tournaments. But we had nothing else to try so I decided to go along and see how it turned out."
How it turned out is history, of course, history that seems to say billiards "family style" is here to stay for quite some time. But instead of looking too far ahead, let's look back at the past nine U.S. Opens. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.....
This article was originally published in 1975
Take a good look, much can be learned from the past.
A Thriving 10 Year Old
by Matt Racki III
But there were some anxious moments before the U.S. Open's 1966 debut
No one remembers it exactly the same way, of course. What they do agree on is that it hardly seems possible that a decade has passed since the BCA came up with a "showcase" for the game - the U.S. Open.
There had been other BCA tournaments, to be sure, mostly at places like Chicago's decrepit Navy Pier. It was a perfectly named setting for the event back in the mid-50s, but it soured the Congress on holding showcases for the game until the Open some 10 years later.
If Navy Pier was the place to take a financial bath, the BCA plunged right in - to the tune of about $80,000. And that's enough to make anybody want to forget about staging another disaster like that for a few years.
"There heart was in the right place, I'll say that much for them," said one BCA official. "The problem was that, if anything, they were too generous. We had a 64-man field, a 32-woman field and another field of 32 three-cushion players." The crunch was that BCA picked up the travel expenses for every one of them; hotel bills, meals, the works.
"They figured people would flock to Navy Pier and that BCA would at least get its money back. Well, the people didn't flock, they stayed away in droves. That lapping sound wasn't the waves from Lake Michigan, it was the sound of the BCA taking a nice warm bath."
In a way, that was the end of one era, the 1966 U.S. Open the beginning of another. In the interim, [high] class pocket billiards was nowhere. There was some action in Las Vegas and Johnston City to be sure but that was about it.
Said Mike Geiger, BCA president, "You've got to remember that back in the days before the U.S. Open, home billiard table sales were just about zero. Actually, the Open originally was intended to give table manufacturers a chance to display their wares as much as it was to give players a chance at some real money in a class tournament."
That's pretty much the way Bob Froeschle recalls it too. Froeschle, who's served as tournament director of every U.S. Open noted that "We wanted a showplace for sellers. Table sales were beginning to take off and the main thought behind coming up with a new event like The Open was to show people that billiards was something they could enjoy right in their own home. Naturally the BCA board of directors wanted to present the game in its best possible light, so we opted for the ballroom setting, with blazers for the players and so forth."
It's impossible to bestow "Father of the U.S. Open" status on one man, although not many would quarrel with giving Froeschle and Don Neer, former BCA executive secretary, a lion's share of the laurels.
The board of directors eventually made the final decision, but there was more than one skeptic in the crowd. After all, the Navy Pier disaster hadn't been that long ago.
"One of the main concerns," Froeschle commented, "was that we were giving away too much in prize money. The top spot was worth $2500 and the runner-up got $1500, a far cry from what those two places will be worth next month.
Others felt that BCA shouldn't be sponsoring a tournament at all, that we should simply sanction it and get an outside sponsor. Well, they weren't beating down the door for the chance so BCA ended up putting on the first Open itself."
The 1966 Open was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Sherman House in Chicago, to better get across "the new image" the BCA would from then forth cultivate. About 20 manufacturers had set up displays in hopes of cashing in on the rising demand for home tables.
The biggest thing going for that first event, and something which hasn't happened since, was live TV. A Chicago UHF station beamed the finals, with "Whispering" Joe Wilson of Championship Bowling fame doing running commentary. BCA later edited the show and together with the station, sold it to several other TV outlets.
"It wasn't all sweetness and light," Froeschle recalls, " For instance we didn't have the overhead score projectors then; had to use kids not even in their teens as scorekeepers. We didn't even have official score pads. One thing I'll never forget is one of the kids falling asleep during the title game between Irving Crane and Joe Balsis. I guess he just got bored with the safeties and the fantastic way Crane was just making shot after shot.
We wanted to give the players a sort of "Tournament of Champions" that the golfers and bowlers had. At that time, you had all sorts of "World Champions" all over the place and that only confused the issue."
The players were enthralled by the whole affair, figuring pocket billiards was ready to make a flying permanent leap into the limelight. Perhaps, but Geiger recollects the player's attitudes a little differently.
"I don't think too many of them were all that excited about the size of the prize fund. Kind of funny when you remember that most of the BCA board felt even that much money was too much risk. I think Boston Shorty Johnson probably summed it up best. After it was over he said, 'I finished 10th and got a lousy hundred bucks. You mean to tell me being the 10th best pockets player in the world is only worth a miserable C-note?' I'll have to admit I think Shorty had a point."
Irv Nemecek Sr. of Kieckheffer Mfg Co [now Tweeten] in Chicago and a member of the BCA board at the time recalled that, "One of our biggest problems was raising money for the prize fund. We literally had to go hat in hand and scrape up what we could. But we did manage to get enough to come up with what most of us considered a decent prize fund.
"The U.S. Open was different from all previous tournaments in that we didn't just invite the 'stars' to take part. We had qualifying tournaments for each of the spots, something that rarely, if ever, had been done before. Before the first Open, most tournaments simply invited the hottest dozen or so biggies in hopes of insuring a big gate. But I can't fault them for that; that way you were almost always guaranteed a couple of stars in the final game."
Another BCA board member at the time, Bill Sheffer of Tweeten Fibre Co in Chicago said that "I was sort of lukewarm to the whole idea of an Open. I had seen big tournaments come and go many times before and I couldn't see the Open as being all that different.
The way I saw it, we were headed down the same old path of hundreds of tournaments. But we had nothing else to try so I decided to go along and see how it turned out."
How it turned out is history, of course, history that seems to say billiards "family style" is here to stay for quite some time. But instead of looking too far ahead, let's look back at the past nine U.S. Opens. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.....