Is billiards the toughest sport?

storke said:
I ask this question because as I think of it I can't think of another sport with as many top competitors. Are there the same in other sports? Look at how many great pool players there are. The list seems to get bigger yearly. What are your opinions?
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lol of course, many actually. Every sport has many good competitors nowadays. Even a computer game, if you see how is played at the top level is insane.

I disagree about the golf that many mentioned (will be the last in my list), because not many ppl have access to it. I actually don't know not a single person from all the people that I have known through out my life that plays golf and I have lived in three countries (Greece, UK and Cyprus). I guess that is played a lot in US, but definitely not in the rest of the world.

One thing though makes pool very very competitive and that is that you can play it in any age. Therefore, all good players from every decade accumulate together through the years, which make the competition immense!
 
You're all crazy. Every sport have lots and lots of great players that don't make it. Just with major sports, you either make it or disappear from the radar. The difference between making it and going back to the factory and playing softball 2 nights a week is miniscule. Case in point, I've a friend who's brother played in the highest levels of the Yankee farm system, but never made it though he was a great prospect. If he played another position he may have been on the Yankees, if he was in another organization he may have made it to the bigs in his position. However, the yankees were strong in his position, but didn't want to trade him.
Tons of people in every sport that are missing that nanosecond of reaction time, 2 inches of leaping ability, that tiny bit of depth perception; nothing special about the difficulty of making it in pool or golf.
IMO
 
softshot said:
most of these posts boil down to golf and pool. As close to an apples to apples comparison as your likely to find (call it red apples vs green apples)

the biggest difference between the two is this:

In golf you have to beat a score card, your opponent has no tactical moves against you, he cannot make your position in the game better or worse for any given shot, the total score is all that matters.

Golf vs pool... the closest analogy is 3 ball who can make all three balls in the least amount of shots.. not exactly the most difficult billiards game.

In pool (9,10-ball) a skilled opponent can make your life miserable and only sink a single ball himself. on the score card he's getting whipped but at the end of the rack he won.

Compared to other reaction sports the physical demands are not as high in many ways, run faster, hit harder, stay on your feet while beaten up.

But, the muscle control is far more important in pool that anywhere else. To punch a guy in the face.. you just hit hard and land on his face. do that enough times with enough power and you will win, or Track..just run fast. fastest guy there wins.. He might not be able to complete a sentence or tell you anything other than "I RUN FAST". the muscles are pushed to their peak and the guy with the highest peak wins 90% of the time.

Pool is fine motor control on a level nothing else compares to. name another sport where muscles are forced to move comparatively slowly, very short distances with pinpoint precision. mentally add in not only mental fortitude, but knowledge of the game. and you have a very difficult sport.

Football players need a similar knowledge of the game, but at the end of the day its their reaction speed that determines winning or losing any given play.

compare that to one pocket where the guy with the most knowledge but diminished skills will come out ahead more often than not.

you can play pool your whole life and you are in between two extremes lots of knowledge and less skills or less knowledge and a ton of skill, very few hit the sweet spot and have enough of both for a little while but its always a limited time.. just a few years.
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Yeah, I would rank Johnny Archer rght up there with Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Robinson. Why is it when asked, people will always say their sport is the most difficult? What other sports have had a 16 year old world champion? I'm not dissin' pool, it is in my blood, but realistically there are games and sports that are more difficult.
 
but the NFL and NBA have the best athletes in the nation by far, baseball and track are a distant second
 
Having raced as an amateur for two years and then on the UCLA cycling team for two years, I can attest to the difficulty of cycling. The incredible difficulty of the Tour de France is beyond the comprehension of most sports enthusiasts in this country.

Having said that, the most difficult sporting event I've ever heard about was one that my grandfather competed in in 1928. Here is a description:

"The Transcontinental Foot Race started at Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles and finished in Madison Square Garden in New York City. 199 runners left Los Angeles, California on March 4th, 1928 at 3:30 p.m.. 55 runners finished on May 26th, 1928. Only men were allowed to enter the race. The race took 84 days to run from coast to coast. It was called the Bunion Derby by the newspapers. The Bunion Derby followed Route 66 from Los Angeles to Chicago. From Chicago to New York City the race ran wherever the promoter, C.C. Pyle, could get the town to pay a fee. Dr. K.H. Begg, a prominent medical expert, predicted that the race would take five to ten years off the runners lives. The runners ran an average of 40 miles a day, nearly the equivalent of two marathons. The shortest distance they ran was the first day, 17 miles from Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles to Puente, California. The longest distance was 74.6 miles from Waverly, New York to Deposit, New York, the 79th day. The race ran from California through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The race covered a total of 3,422.3 miles."

http://www.itvs.org/footrace/

My grandfather, John Jackson Stone Jr. was one of the 55 runners who finished the race.

http://www.itvs.org/footrace/runnerbio/bio1020_11.htm#jstone
 
I like to look at this question from a standpoint of how hard it is to play at a basic level. Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in any sport in my opinion, but I believe golf is the hardest sport to become proficient at and play at a top level. Poll, however, is a close second. If yo ulook at the ability to run racks as a basic successful level, pool can be considered very difficult. The precise level of play required makes it so difficult. Anyone can get to where they can make the basic shots, but positioning the cue ball precisely makes the game so difficult. 1 0r 2 inches off and the runout can be ruined. Proficiency at it takes such a huge time demand that very few ever reach an upper level. Also, most people don't start playing it until they are older and do not ahve as much time to commit to becoming proficient. If you start it as a kid and put the time almost every amercian boy puts into baseball, than you can reach a basic level of profincinecy that can be more easliy maintained.
 
Baseball is a hard sport no doubt, but much tougher decades ago when alot of guys could hit for power, hit for average, run, field and throw , way too many specialists nowadays, pitchers too, starters middlemen, relievers, lefty specialists, etc....

Football in the NFL has become ALOT harder, db's who now run a 4.4 are considered average speed, anything under 6 ft 220 is small, and receivers without a 35+inch vertical are the suck

basketball too, the NBA gets alot of super athletes that are so damn good they know from college a long prosperous NBA career awaits and skip the uncertainty of the NFL where college Gods like Leinhart and Bush can turn into mush

but boxing particularly at the lighter weight classes is a test of athleticism, endurance, and pain management

the punishment accumalted by hundreds of punches in a fight and thousands during training needs to be felt to be believed

amateur wrestling comes close, but the brutality one must survive in a boxing ring while simultaneously performing at a high athletic level is insane

Billiards is beautifull in its many forms, but you think fat obese champions like Mizerak and Buddy Hall can do anything else? please
 
I like the argument the non-golfers make against golf..."your opponent doesn't get to play defense against you leaving no shot". One of your opponents does - the course designer. If it's a tournament there's likely 100+ other players that are also your opponents. You can shoot the best round you've ever shot in your entire life, and lose. You don't say that too often in pool. How often have you had to hit a ball that you couldn't see in pool? No, I don't mean an object ball, I mean the cue ball?

There is a ton of similarities between the two sports, but golf has so many varying factors (course set-up, weather, etc. etc. etc.) I have to give it an edge on difficulty. Believe it or not I have run a rack of balls in 8 ball, 9 ball, and 10 ball....each a PERFECT game (I've also rolled 3 perfect games in bowling BTW), but I have yet to shoot an 18 in golf.
 
belmicah said:
How many extremely intelligent football players have you met? Could they beat Efren in chess?
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LMAO.. now we are asking not which sport is the toughest to master, but what sport is toughest to master and then beat someone in chess???

Where the hell does this come from??? Should we hold an IQ test afterwards???

Belmicah - I generally enjoy your posts, but this does not make sense to me. Maybe I am missing something.
 
cuetechasaurus said:
In pool you can be doing everything perfectly, and one small little error can cost you the match and the tournament.
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How is that different than golf? You can be doing everything perfectly with a one stroke lead and shank one shot, make bogie or worse, and lose.

I don't see much of a difference.

I do agree with your other point, however, that pool is one of the only games that you can lose without ever having a shot.
 
I still think I'd rather lose having never shot than to lose after playing better than you have ever played in your life....

I am not a very good pool player, and really I'm only a pretty decent golfer (realative statement). Just in my weekend group (16 guys) last year I shot a 68 on a course that my previous low was 71....now, none of us are anywhere close to making any TOUR (or even competing in any REAL amateur tourney), but we are all somewhere between scratch and 6 handicaps....I was beat by another guy who shot 67 and two others were under par as well (70 and 71 respectively). Since the scoring was so low that day I didn't win a single skin, greenie, team game, ANYTHING!!!

In both pool and golf, ya just gotta say - he/she shot well, and won...
 
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