How many Champions parents owned Pool Rooms

I recall hearing that Vivian Villarreal started developing her game as a child in a relative's bar that had tables, aunt or grandmother I believe.
 
Michelle Mcdermotts father owned the Tulsa Billiards Palace and Magoos.....i've known her for years. champion without the trophies. Im sure if she desired and wanted to travel and be away from family she could.

but alot of great players around tulsa, i attribute that not only to the good older crowd, but the fact that pool was accessible to the kids.....the parents aint got to own a room....kid just got to be able to get to the room in the first place.

if we had had one in my home town that i could have been in i'd have rode my bike i'm sure....brought some weedeating money lol
 
mikepage said:
Yes, but I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the bigger implication of the this observation--the observation that champions frequently are drawn from kids growing up around poolrooms. It means ours is a very underdeveloped activity and that no current pool player would likely even be pro level if pool had a couple decades with the popularity of, say, soccer

What immersion does is put an INDIVIDUAL at the high end of the INDIVIDUAL's potential. Whether that individual's personally high performance is good in the bigger world depends the pool of people who are reaching their potential.

Consider this. If everyone who responded to this thread was immersed in basketball from a very young age, we would all be way better that we are now. But likely none of us would be basketball champions. That is because, at least in the US, pretty much any kid who runs and jumps well and has decent coordination is reinforced from a young age with a basketball.

By contrast, you could adopt any kindergarten class, work with the kids immersion style for a decade, and produce some world-class pool players.
Click to expand...

Another problem we face is that laws in many places prevent young people under 21 in pool rooms because of alcohol sales. I started playing (without free access to a room) when I was 14...I am 36 now. The problem I always ran into was that I was not allowed in many rooms. Lucky for me, there is an alcohol free room here (St. Louis, MO), and that is where I played for years.

kollegedave
 
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