Johnny
Gotta chuckle about Johnny being weak kicking. He came into a small place he had never seen before. Won the coin flip. Bar box eight ball. He calls the eight ball in the corner on the break. Done. He called it in the side on the break. Done. He calls it in the side on the break. Done. Everybody in the place was telling me to quit by then. "I'll see that one more time!" The eight ball had been slow rolling in the side and this time it stopped in the jaws, and there ain't much jaw in the sides of those old Valleys!
I got a little of my own back that game and the next few. Funny thing, this was late eighties, maybe early nineties, I had never heard of Johnny Archer. I decided I had better let him shoot, didn't want to lose him when I was in the black now. I froze the cue ball to my ball and between it and the foot rail about an inch off the rail. All of his balls plus about three or four of mine were still on the table so he had about ten balls worth of traffic on that bar table to deal with.
He was going to have to kick into the foot rail with side spin to even hit one of his balls with a two rail kick. Even hitting his ball wasn't going to help, I had my balls blocking the two pockets his balls were near. As he waved his stick around studying the shot though it was obvious he was going for the fifteen ball, almost frozen on the head rail and about a diamond out from the pocket. A shot so ridiculous I hadn't even considered it. It was obvious Johnny was!
The shot was a Z bank, eight rails, hitting every rail on the table at least once, two of them twice. Johnny fired, the cue ball rolled clean through all of that traffic and hit the fifteen. It had ran out of steam and the fifteen stopped in the jaws of the corner pocket he was trying to put it in.
Even without the fifteen ball falling that remains the most impressive shot I have personally seen in fifty years of playing pool. I tried it for several hours over the next two weeks, first with the balls as I remembered them, then just using my blocking ball, the cue ball, and the fifteen. Trying the shot dozens of times with an empty table I never managed to even hit the fifteen.
Johnny at his best, Shane at his best, if they played eleven times, one would probably win five times and the other one six. It would be purely a given day thing. My bet is kicking isn't where anyone would find Johnny at his best deficient!
Hu