I see professional pool becoming more and more like professional golf in that there is less separation among the pro level players than ever before. On the PGA tour just this year we have seen several new players (two just out of college) win tour events. The best players still manage to make their presence felt and are at their best in the most important tournaments (Brooks Koepka this year!). This holds true for pool as well. We keep seeing new faces emerge from the proving grounds of the Euro Tour and Taiwan and the Philippines have young talented players still waiting in the wings to make their presence felt.
Pool continues to grow in popularity worldwide and as this happens and the tournament prize money increases you can expect to keep seeing new young players who are challenging and beating the name players. That said, if you look at the final sixteen players in the recent World Ten Ball, at least half of them are long standing champions of our sport. There is only one (Yoshioka) unfamiliar name on the list and a couple of the less well known Euro players, who have done well in Europe and are not unknown to the other top players.
There is more parity in pro pool today and it should be no surprise if a relative unknown goes deep or even wins a big tournament (although I have yet to see that happen - an actual win by an unknown or little known player). That happens far more often in golf, even in fields full of big name players (Mathew Wolf, fresh out of college, won a recent full tour event!). Nothing like that has happened in pool as yet. Ko P. Chung is a very well known player who has been knocking on the door for a long time now.
Somehow in pro pool, the final six to eight players always seem to be among the elite in the game. There has been an occasional surprise (Yoshioka again) but that is an outlier, especially in major tournaments.
