I wasn't going to honor you with a response until now. I may not be the smartest guy in the room because that is certainly you. But in my role as TD I felt responsible for the conduct of the event, including the behavior of the players. How I handled each situation was wholly dependent on what I thought would work best at the moment. All in all I'm satisfied with the job I did in running over 200 pool tournaments. Not perfect by any means but they all went off for the most part without a hitch from start to finish. I preferred that people didn't see what went on behind the scenes to make it look like the event ran smooth as silk, because they never did, and I always had to put out a few fires along the way. Earl Strickland was probably the single most difficult player I had to deal with over a period of more than three decades. Not the only one, but most certainly the most flagrant offender of whatever code of conduct was in place. Every time he played a match I kept a close watch over him. I had to! And he knew I was watching him too. He also knew when I wasn't there and he could get away with a lot of stuff that wouldn't fly with me.
In this particular situation, the match with Landon, Earl had gone on record that he was going to demolish this kid and put him in his place. The match was played on the BigFoot table in a location near the tournament desk, but we had other matches going on at the same time that somewhat blocked my view. There was a large crowd around the table to watch this match, further blocking me from seeing what was going on. Early in the match, after only two or three games, Landon's father Stan came to me and said Earl was talking to Landon while he was at the table shooting. I told him I would put a stop to that and waited for the next game to begin, and quietly moved closer to the table. Sure enough, when Landon got to the table Earl started talking shit about him and how he was playing. I stepped in and stopped the match. That's when I laid down the law to Earl, "If you want to talk while you're at the table, okay. But when Landon is at the table I don't want to hear your voice." Earl of course objected, saying he wasn't bothering Landon (which may be true. The kid was solid!). Knowing that I would have to come back to the table again and again I decided to pull up a chair and watch the match from there. I could see the other tables as well from that position.
Earl got the message! He started to talk a couple of times and then he looked at me and shut up. He knew I would penalize him games on the wire, which I had done before. Landon went on to put the worst beating on Earl I had ever seen. He made him eat his words! Stan Shuffett thanked me afterward for what I had done. He knew there would have been more problems without me there watching.
Maybe you would have handled this differently, but Earl was a special case. The fans wanted to see him play, so I always preferred not to forfeit him like I had done once before at the U.S. Open, when he used profanity over and over again, including directing it at me. I wanted this match to happen because I knew how much interest there was in seeing these two go at it. Call it what you want, but I call it making the event happen and giving the fans what they paid for. I prefer to stop a train wreck before it takes place. Kapeche