August 26, 2011
Ojanpa: 'Rack 'em Randy' rolls on
By Brian Ojanpa The Free Press
— During Randy Goettlicher’s senior year at Mankato Loyola High School in 1960 he had a buddy with a pool table in his home.
On Friday nights when nothing else was going on a group of guys would go there to play, and Goettlicher would beat them like rented rugs.
“After six months they quit inviting me,” Goettlicher says. “I kept taking all their allowance money.”
At that point pool was still just a dalliance for Goettlicher, an all-state football running back who received a scholarship to play at Mankato State College.
One day he ventured into the student union and gravitated to a pool table. In no time he was taking on all comers and raking in their cash.
“That’s when the bug really bit me.”
And it’s still biting the 69-year-old Dallas resident, whose groundbreaking pool school there annually graduates hundreds of students and dozens of instructors.
“I probably have the best job in the world,” he says. “It’s been a good ride.”
In the late ’60s Goettlicher began his career arc as an instructional trailblazer for a game that heretofore schooled people the old-fashioned way — by observing and competing against good players.
“There were no books, no instructions. Everything was a secret,” Goettlicher says.
He opened a billiards academy in Mankato and began giving private lessons. To ratchet up his knowledge he made a 1971 pilgrimage to Madison, Wis., to learn at the knee of Jerry Briesath, then the only pool instructor in the nation and still Goettlicher’s mentor.
He kept traveling to Madison for Briesath’s lessons until one day, two years into the tutoring, Briesath told him he had the makings to be a stellar pool instructor.
So it came to be.
Goettlicher’s black SUV has a couple of novelty eight-balls hanging from its rear-view mirror and his personalized license plate bears the letters SPF — Set, Pause, Finish — the cornerstone mechanics of his school’s shot-making instructionals, which he continues to tweak in his constant quest for improvement.
To his way of thinking, the day you quit learning is the day you’re toast. That’s why he has a bucket near his school’s entrance. The sign on it implores self-perceived hotshots to chuck their egos into it.
Goettlicher learned his lesson about that long ago, when he played pool with the great Willie Mosconi in a series of exhibitions, and Mosconi flailed him like one of those aforementioned rented rugs.
Goettlicher was in Mankato the past week to visit high school classmate Dave Oberle, play a lot of golf and split off for teaching appearances at pool schools in Marshall and Fargo, N.D.
A couple of years ago he went to New Zealand to teach. Of the 200 Billiard Congress of America instructors worldwide, 150 are graduates of his pool schools.
Goettlicher figures he’ll work in high gear two more years before throttling down. He says at that point he’ll give some individual lessons and start playing competitively again. He describes his skill level as elite amateur.
His wife Karen will go on the road with him as his assistant instructor. Though she didn’t take up chalk and cue until later in life she has become a fine player and student of the game, Goettlicher says.
In fact, she was instrumental in developing Scotch Doubles.
The popular team-play format, not the stiff drink.
Ojanpa: 'Rack 'em Randy' rolls on
By Brian Ojanpa The Free Press
— During Randy Goettlicher’s senior year at Mankato Loyola High School in 1960 he had a buddy with a pool table in his home.
On Friday nights when nothing else was going on a group of guys would go there to play, and Goettlicher would beat them like rented rugs.
“After six months they quit inviting me,” Goettlicher says. “I kept taking all their allowance money.”
At that point pool was still just a dalliance for Goettlicher, an all-state football running back who received a scholarship to play at Mankato State College.
One day he ventured into the student union and gravitated to a pool table. In no time he was taking on all comers and raking in their cash.
“That’s when the bug really bit me.”
And it’s still biting the 69-year-old Dallas resident, whose groundbreaking pool school there annually graduates hundreds of students and dozens of instructors.
“I probably have the best job in the world,” he says. “It’s been a good ride.”
In the late ’60s Goettlicher began his career arc as an instructional trailblazer for a game that heretofore schooled people the old-fashioned way — by observing and competing against good players.
“There were no books, no instructions. Everything was a secret,” Goettlicher says.
He opened a billiards academy in Mankato and began giving private lessons. To ratchet up his knowledge he made a 1971 pilgrimage to Madison, Wis., to learn at the knee of Jerry Briesath, then the only pool instructor in the nation and still Goettlicher’s mentor.
He kept traveling to Madison for Briesath’s lessons until one day, two years into the tutoring, Briesath told him he had the makings to be a stellar pool instructor.
So it came to be.
Goettlicher’s black SUV has a couple of novelty eight-balls hanging from its rear-view mirror and his personalized license plate bears the letters SPF — Set, Pause, Finish — the cornerstone mechanics of his school’s shot-making instructionals, which he continues to tweak in his constant quest for improvement.
To his way of thinking, the day you quit learning is the day you’re toast. That’s why he has a bucket near his school’s entrance. The sign on it implores self-perceived hotshots to chuck their egos into it.
Goettlicher learned his lesson about that long ago, when he played pool with the great Willie Mosconi in a series of exhibitions, and Mosconi flailed him like one of those aforementioned rented rugs.
Goettlicher was in Mankato the past week to visit high school classmate Dave Oberle, play a lot of golf and split off for teaching appearances at pool schools in Marshall and Fargo, N.D.
A couple of years ago he went to New Zealand to teach. Of the 200 Billiard Congress of America instructors worldwide, 150 are graduates of his pool schools.
Goettlicher figures he’ll work in high gear two more years before throttling down. He says at that point he’ll give some individual lessons and start playing competitively again. He describes his skill level as elite amateur.
His wife Karen will go on the road with him as his assistant instructor. Though she didn’t take up chalk and cue until later in life she has become a fine player and student of the game, Goettlicher says.
In fact, she was instrumental in developing Scotch Doubles.
The popular team-play format, not the stiff drink.
