The debate over hard work and talent has been rehashed many times. It will never be resolved and people will land on different sides of the fence. In my opinion there are two more important questions to be asked:
How does the belief talent is required to make it to the top help your pool journey?
How does belief that hard work will take you to the top help your pool journey?
In my opinion belief in talent can be demotivating. When things aren't coming together it's too easy to say "Well, I guess I just don't have it, why bother". When you believe that hard work will get you anywhere you want to go, when things get tough the answer is always the same: Keep Going.
Why would anyone choose to believe something that makes it harder to achieve their goals? I seriously don't understand. What is the benefit of believing in talent? I suppose if you're looking for excuses for failing to achieve your goals then it's a good one. Maybe you can sit around the bar and talk about how you could've been a contender. But every champion out there believes they are 100% accountable for their pool destiny. Every one.
You can either soften the blow of failure or turn your dreams into reality.
Talent is real and is imperative for pool and snooker success. Beauty is more important for happiness than anything else. Harsh truths are no less true.
Saw a guy once who went from complete beginner to serious contender in 6 months. Sorry buddy, that's pure talent. Don't give me that hard work crap. He was playing a lot sure, so was 100 other guys who didn't excel. Even the best of the rest took at least a couple of years to get to a high level. He didn't play drills, work with a coach, anything. He just picked up a cue and instantly (relatively speaking) knew how to play. His shotmaking skills and shot selection sense were just spot on. Just a freak of nature that I'll likely never see the likes of again. I've also seen people play for decades who can't string 5 balls to save their lives. They refuse to listen to anyone or learn anything new.
I had hopes on one day breaking 200 balls in straight pool. I've come to the realization that I never will. It's just too much of a leap from where I am now, I don't have the talent and the clock is running out. As you get out to triple digits, the difficulty double and triples faster and faster with the raising number. Also the pocket size keeps going down in my pool hall. Haven't played on 5 inch pockets in a decade. The table I've been playing on for years now is 4.2-4.3 inches. It's very tough to even break 100. The people are now talking about 4 inch pockets... Hope it doesn't happen, but there is a chance.
I'm not wasting every minute of my life chasing this dream anymore. Is it a failure? In a sense, I didn't reach my goal. In another sense, I played a game I love and enjoyed it. I still play the game on and off, though not since Corona struck. I'm still learning little bits every time I play, and I enjoy it more now, since it's not longer "work" towards a goal, but just pure fun. The last time I played I didn't even try to count the balls, just enjoyed running them, which was a first. Felt like a pretty good run too.
While I have seen people improve (myself included) after the 5 years of playing mark, huge leaps do not happen. The best you can hope for after that is incremental improvement. I've never seen ANY coach of any standing taking someone who is a 5 year or more (of solid play) C player and turn him into a star. It just doesn't happen. Even from B player and up to A is not typically seen, but can happen. Usually people just stay put around the skill level they are at the 5 year mark, at least as far as raw shotmaking and speed control is concerned. They do tend to learn workarounds for their problem shots to give them better results. As they improve marginally, so do usually the people around them and the skill ladder in the pool hall remains unchanged. The best you can do for these people is to teach good shot selection and make their fundamentals solid so they have better consistency. They still won't break records, but they'll get some upsets and maybe place in some local tournaments. Sometimes when everything goes right, they can do remarkable things, like run 6, 7 maybe 8 racks, that one time. Every B-lifer has a story like that.
I believe in coaching, learning new things and striving towards improvement. I also believe in realistic expectations. If you are a C player after 5 years, you'll never win the US Open. Believing that you will is unlikely to help you with anything other than wasting time and giving you heartbreak.
Edit: This post comes off maybe unnecessarily negative. You can increase your skills, maybe even go up a level after 5 years, but not likely 2 or 3 levels, like some would have you believe. It's also going to be a lot of hard work. Also if you are allready at a high level at the 5 year mark, then I think it's more likely that you can improve more. The opposite is also true, if you are completely terrible and unable to even reliably run one rack of 8 ball, you can improve a lot with coaching. The mediocre is the hardest place to get out of.