As another poster said it's not about athleticism (strength, speed, etc) but hand eye coordination is the key. If you take someone that doesn't play pool but has that hand/eye thing in their arsenal you can teach them to make a ball and move the cue ball much faster than someone who doesn't have it. If you look at the replies here, golf, ping pong, shooting a b-ball, bowling, all games where you have to deftly deliver a ball with touch to a given area kind of sums it up. Some years ago I entered a horseshoe tournment for fun and won the thing. Obviously there wasn't any world beaters in it but lots of old school players that had played most of their life. I had only played like twice in my life but the process of delivering that shoe to the stake just came easy to me.