Dave Matlock has been cleaning up in the last few local tournaments. Here's a recent stream of one of his matches if you have facebook:
Dave Matlock
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Thank you for posting that. While your link didn't come through searching on 'Dave Matlock' videos produced a few hits. I will definitely be watching those matches.
Yes. Thank you that worked!
I want to update my answer a little bit.
I just spent some time watching Matlock play in the Olathe tournament and another tournament that was recently streamed. Padgett's I think. Anyway, it brought back to me his style of play far more vividly than memory alone.
I think what the author referred to in the OP called clever patterns were very clever at the time Matlock was dominating the bar box. In those days bar boxes were seen by top players as a necessary evil you had to put up with to gamble on the road or play in many tournaments in the south and midwest. Most pros and top players played them like a smaller big table.
In those days cameras were rare and video was rarer. Seeing a top bar table specialist use the quirks of a big or heavy cue ball, using dead rails to hold seemingly impossible bank shots and shooting fearlessly on long shots had to be eye opening for people who followed professional pool.
It's not that his bar table game is not clever compared to what all the top players now are doing on the bar table.
They all play that way now on the bar box. It's that he was one of the first top players that did it in the light of day.
This that I bolded was indeed the big deal. I started out cursing all the various bar table cue balls and the crappy rails just like most big table players. When I recognized that they weren't just scaled down big tables things changed a lot!
One thing, most guys recovering bar tables were doing it under contract to somebody that was splitting the coins fifty-fifty with the bar owners. Pretty common for the vending machine company to be owned by the good hands people in this neck of the woods. They didn't want to pay much and they didn't want the tables down long. Cloth was likely to be inferior and mechanics learned the trick of trading out cushions instead of recovering them on the spot to get in and out fast. They would have a garbage can full of already recovered cushions and quickly recover the bed of the table and swap out the cushions. Of course this meant that all six sections of cushion might be of different ages and conditions and some almost certainly were! A barbox player that was going to do any kicking or banking had to learn the cushions and often loose rails in a hurry along with the cue balls. Definitely gave a little home field advantage to the local boys!
Hu
I live in the Kansas City area. Other than Raytown Recreation, I know of no other pool halls. It's all places are like Side Pockets. They all have food and drinks. Bar tables (3.5 x 7) are the norm. Pool leagues dominate.
Yep. I lived in Wichita for a few years. Loved the pool scene there, always action, tournaments every night. But almost all on bar tables. A bar I went to a lot, Shooters on S. Hydraulic, would have tournaments anytime they had enough players that wanted to play. It was awesome! If they were busy on a league night they would run a mini tournament after leagues. Sometimes on non-league nights there might be 3 or 4 tournaments before the night was over. Each with 8-16 players in it. They had "industry" drink specials starting at 11 pm for people who worked restaurants and second shift so it would stay hopping until closing time. I don't even remember when that was. But pretty late.
A good night at Shooters was like a good week anywhere else as far as action goes. Matlock was there sometimes. Also had Coy Lee, Jr Brown, Gabe Owen, other players from Tulsa like James Walden occasionally. Usually someone passing through like Jamie Bowman or Chad Vilmont. Even saw Danny Medina there a couple of times.
