As said earlier Jim Rempe gave it his best shot at Snooker when he was already in his late 30's. He put a 6x12 table in his home and practiced daily for a couple of years. He made it through the qualifying stages and got onto the main tour (in the final 64) but could never get past the round of sixteen (his best finish). Jimmy had been a winner at every other discipline he tried, including winning the English Black Ball championship more than once!
After two solid years of effort Jimmy gave up on this dream, but only after making the best showing of any American player. He told me about his experience later saying, "We have NO chance at this game," meaning all the top American players. He said we would have to have started at age ten to be up to speed with the top English players.
There is one American who I think could have made a dent over there and that's Harold Worst. He was cut from a different cloth than any other pool player I ever met. He excelled at Three Cushion and won a World Championship at age 24! He switched to pool in his late 20's and quickly became one of the best players in the world, winning multiple championships. And he could play Snooker! He played as a boy in Grand Rapids and just needed to rekindle his snooker stroke. He would have been running centuries within months, knowing him. Harold was a wunderkind with a cue!
I saw Harold play Cornbread (who also learned snooker as a young man in Detroit) in the finals of a big snooker championship in Detroit in 1963. This tournament had many of the top Canadian players in it and Harold and Cornbread reached the finals. They both played damn good! I just remember watching them run out with a few red balls remaining (probably running in the 60's and 70's). I think Harold won this match and he also played Red in the 9-Ball and One Pocket finals. Red won only the One Pocket. They were clearly the two best players there.
I went up there with a crew from Wink's Billiards in Dayton, which would be bought years later by Joe Burns and turned into Forest Park Billiards. Pappy Winkler won a bunch of money gambling in Detroit and bought himself a brand new Mustang (1964 model, maybe it cost $2,500 at the most), one of the first I ever saw. I got to drive back with him (just him and me) to Dayton.
Wink later made me my first two piece cue, taking a Brunswick house cue and putting a brass joint in it. He charged me $5 for that cue and I made my first score ($80) playing with it.
I beat Dan Bell, who owned a poolroom in Fairborn, Ohio for $80 playing for $5 a game 9-Ball. I was 19 years old and thrilled that I could finally play a little. I had to tell you this because it's amazing that I remember it. Crazy huh! Some things that happened back then I've completely forgotten. I've had guys come up to me at tournaments and remind me about a time when we played and what happened in the poolroom that night, and I don't remember any of it. I'd just ask them how much it cost me and laugh, cause usually they would tell me I won afterward. I swear I don't remember it at all except maybe going to or being in that poolroom, or that town. I estimate that I played in over 300 poolrooms between the age of 20 and 27. I was a sick pool nut, looking for a game every day! My M.O. was very simple. I'd get out my map and drive to the next big town, go to a phone booth and find the name and address of the biggest poolroom in town and go there. I'd usually get a game pretty fast and play one of the best players in the room. Most of the time I won a little money (maybe $25-50) and that was it. If no one else asked me to play, I would get back in my car, take out my map and drive to the next town (sometimes I would get steered to another poolroom in the same town). I wasn't really trying to do anything more than survive and play more pool. I was seriously addicted to the game!
