There was a guy in college that started playing and had zero ability. It also seemed like he had zero natural talent. He loved it though and would gamble with everyone for $5/game etc...and he lost a lot.
But he was a very smart guy - Engineering Physics Major - and he practiced constantly. He loved the pursuit of practice. He would hit shots different ways and observe how the balls reacted. He worked tirelessly on his stroke and stance and aim. He was always doing weird things. Weird to the rest of us.
This was before the internet to speak of. It was difficult to find good material on pool and we were all broke college students so didn't have money for books or DVDs really.
Anyway, within about a year he got really, really good. He would have won our ACU-I regional but he got screwed out of it and didn't get to attend nationals.
It was a weird tournament run by Jack White where he decided to do a 100 player round robin. Yep, everybody had to play every other player in the tournament. It was crazy. We did nothing but play pool for the whole ACU-I event. After 30 hours or so of playing straight through the last day to try and finish the tournament in time he's tied with two other players having only lost 3 matches. So they play a ring game first player to win two games in a row wins. He lost.
The rub? Two of his losses were to top players from a Denver school who got fed up with the tournament format and withdrew halfway through. They had both played him and and then forfeited to the two players he was tied with. We argued that they should wipe out all of the matches those players played since they impacted the overall score but Jack didn't want to do that. So he ended up losing playing a 1-game winner stay on tie breaker to a tournament that he clearly won. The guy who won the tournament - two of his losses were to me and this guy - won Nationals that year. I'm pretty sure my teammate would have won if he had gone in his place.
Long story short, I hadn't seen him in a while and he showed up at a tournament saying he hadn't played in years. Still played great though and I played him in the finals. I beat him using a shot that he had showed me years before.
The bottom line though is when he started, everybody thought he had no talent. He just worked harder and smarter than everyone else at getting better and he got better. Way better.