POOL MOST DIFFICULT SPORT

Anybody that believes pool is the most difficult sport more than likely hasn't been heavily involved in trying to excel in other sports that require strength, stamina, hand eye coordination of a different nature, injuries, speed, and mental/physical torture.
Last I checked, boxing and MMA are sports.
 
fjk said:
Dennis Hatch was holding his own with everyone when he was 15. How difficult could it be if teenagers could be world class players and even dominate?
Click to expand...

Gymnastics seems pretty difficult, and a college female gymnast is already over the hill. I think China got caught with 13 year olds on their Olympic squad or something.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
The most difficult thing in pool is not getting a chance. Your opponent runs out and you never get to the table.

Golf has to be the hardest. It really is a exercise in futility. The object is difficult but then you have to try and accomplish it on uneven ground,or by going over water,under tree limbs,against the wind , out of the sand,distracted by a playboy bunny selling beer out of a cart,and so on.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Another way to judge difficulty is by how often the player is challenged with something at the edge of their competence (like hitting a 95MPH baseball). I think on that basis tennis is one of the most difficult games because every few seconds a top player has to return a ball that most amateur players (think 400 Fargo but at tennis) would rarely get their racket on. I think that is the reason that tennis seems to be dominated by a few players in any era. A match provides many, many opportunities for a player to show his superiority and if one player is only a little bit better than his opponent, the many points with many difficult shots will swing the odds strongly in his favor.

On the other hand, at pool many runs are routine and if done reasonably well, the player has no challenge until the next break shot. A series of safeties is the only time at nine ball that there is some back-and-forth. One pocket is a much more difficult game than nine ball by this measure.

If you compare baseball to tennis for challenges/minute, baseball looks trivial.
Click to expand...
That's a good point and gets at what I'm trying to say. The general demands of pool itself is such that the maestros of the sport have too much "routine" in their matches and not enough "challenge." That said, a 400 Fargo player would hardly pull off probably 70% of shots that a pro makes look easy, mostly on the positional side. But at the same time, all pros would still pull off those shots at least 95% of the time.

In a sense, the way skill is shown in pool primarily is through being able to stay near-perfect for so long. Any banger can catch fire and run out a rack. Someone like me can occasionally have a killer set. But these pros stay at that level of play day after day, year after year. It's just much harder to appreciate that skill as a casual fan than it is to appreciate something like hitting four home runs in a game, or throwing 5 TDs.
 
SpiderWebComm said:
Last I checked, boxing and MMA are sports.
Click to expand...
I'm not a tough guy, but I get dumb on a physical challenge, especially anything fight related. Tunnel vision to the extreme. To me, it's easier to fight/punch/dodge than try to keep my mind focused for an entire pool tournament.

I'm not saying boxing or MMA is easier than pool, it's not, you have a great point. I'm saying some people are wired for fighting. For some people the kind of focus that pool takes is tough to sustain. I can't seem to convince myself that making an object ball needs the same focus as throwing or dodging a punch. Maybe if I ever figure that out I'll get to be a real rack runner.
 
boogieman said:
I'm not a tough guy, but I get dumb on a physical challenge, especially anything fight related. Tunnel vision to the extreme. To me, it's easier to fight/punch/dodge than try to keep my mind focused for an entire pool tournament.

I'm not saying boxing or MMA is easier than pool, it's not, you have a great point. I'm saying some people are wired for fighting. For some people the kind of focus that pool takes is tough to sustain. I can't seem to convince myself that making an object ball needs the same focus as throwing or dodging a punch. Maybe if I ever figure that out I'll get to be a real rack runner.
Click to expand...
Just have a friend punch you in the face every time you miss. Then you will treat every shot as a potential black eye and give it the attention it deserves :p
 
As always in these discussions, it's apples and oranges. If by skill you mean pure "athletic" skill, pool wouldn't even be on the radar compared to boxing, hitting a Major League pitcher, quarterbacking an NFL team, or even golf, where the "perfect" stroke requires far more muscles to work in perfect coordination.

But if you're talking about the combination of talent and dedication it takes to reach the highest level of a sport, then pool takes a back seat to very few others. Steve Mizerak could never compete in an Olympics high jump, and Michael Jordan wouldn't win one set in a thousand against Fedor Gorst, no matter how much he practiced.

And I don't think it's any accident that the very top players of the past few years are nearly all in top physical condition. How could they remain at the top, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, if they weren't?

To make another comparison, are ballet dancers athletes? By one measure, they're at the top of the any list, with perfectly trained and hardened muscles, world class hand-eye and foot-eye coordination, timing that rivals a Major League hitter, and being able to live with the mental pressure that knows that one slight misstep can ruin an entire performance.

OTOH how many ballet dancers could execute their moves if a team of rival dancers were trying to knock them on their ass?
 
boogieman said:
I'm not a tough guy, but I get dumb on a physical challenge, especially anything fight related. Tunnel vision to the extreme. To me, it's easier to fight/punch/dodge than try to keep my mind focused for an entire pool tournament.

I'm not saying boxing or MMA is easier than pool, it's not, you have a great point. I'm saying some people are wired for fighting. For some people the kind of focus that pool takes is tough to sustain. I can't seem to convince myself that making an object ball needs the same focus as throwing or dodging a punch. Maybe if I ever figure that out I'll get to be a real rack runner.
Click to expand...
Then I'll go along with what a bunch of others picked...golf. So much harder, more complicated, with endless hours of knowledge and practice. Even when you get into a low handicap or even pro, the game can just fall apart in any one round for multiple facets of the game to make you feel like a fool. Everyone can have an off day at the pool table, but not to the point where it's like you haven't picked up a cue in a month with miscues, missed easy cuts, and missed straight in shots. Golf can do that.
 
If all sports are about displacing objects, then math is the most competitive and destructive sport.

Equations of projectile motion are about hitting targets. Targets vary from small satellites to large structures.

The ability to be precise and accurate is accomplished through mathematics. Especially when operating at scales beyond human comprehension.
 
SpiderWebComm said:
Then I'll go along with what a bunch of others picked...golf. So much harder, more complicated, with endless hours of knowledge and practice. Even when you get into a low handicap or even pro, the game can just fall apart in any one round for multiple facets of the game to make you feel like a fool. Everyone can have an off day at the pool table, but not to the point where it's like you haven't picked up a cue in a month with miscues, missed easy cuts, and missed straight in shots. Golf can do that.
Click to expand...
I was a very good hitter in high school and college, with several letters from scouts that seemed to agree with that assessment.

I then tried to transport that batting swing to a golf course, and it was like trying to learn Japanese. I shot a 65 and felt like I was getting somewhere, but then on the back 9 it was more like about 90. Never again. 😬
 
ChrisinNC said:
Not even close to the hand/eye coordination needed to reach the highest levels of most other sports. Even the mechanics of a golf swing is way more difficult than the pool stroke, no contest, sorry.
Click to expand...
I think the mechanics of a golf swing are easier…it’s a natural arc and a lot of the body movement is just to get out of your own way.
…..and you can miss a lot of greens and still shoot par.
 
Last edited:
pt109 said:
I think the mechanics of a golf swing are easier…it’s a natural arc and a lot of the body movement is just to get out of your own way.
…..and you can miss a lot of greens and still shoot par.
Click to expand...
In golf you're using the entire body and it all needs to be very coordinated and in correct positions throughout the swing. In pool it's only the hand and the arm.

If you miss a lot of greens in golf, an excellent short game of chipping, pitching, sand shots, and putting might get you some pars along with bogeys, double bogeys, or higher. Sand traps and different lies in there can be brutal.

An entirely different skill set from the full swing and every bit as tough because of different lengths and thickness and types of grass around the greens and crappy lies. The greens themselves have uphill, downhill, sidehill, breaks to them with different speeds and types of grass. It's not perfectly level 4 1/2' x 9' Simonis cloth installed for each shot on the table along with sand traps, trees, wind and water.
 
SpiderWebComm said:
greens themselves have uphill, downhill, sidehill, breaks to them with different speeds and types of grass. It's not perfectly level 4 1/2' x 9' Simonis cloth installed for each shot on the table along with sand traps, trees, wind and water.
Click to expand...
Mastering pool also to highest level have similar obstacles. Often it is invisible to many.
Just to few examples.
Dirty/polished balls, old cloth, new cloth sliding effects, different rails play often a lot different. The effects are not so obvious than many other SPORTS, but they affect outcome and not knowing and adjusting properly to them will make players fail.
And you all know winner breaks format any miss can be your last. That is more cruel mental pressure compared to any other sports what cuesports have. You don't get equal chances.
In Golf if opponent make hole-in-one, you stll can try get even..
 
CESSNA10 said:
Recently while commentating a pool match Mark Wilson stated that
pool was the most difficult of all sports. Having played baseball at the
college level I would challenge Mark to try hitting a major league 97 mph
fastball or a major league curve or slider. That might change his thinking.
Click to expand...

I have made bets against "star" high school baseball players batting against girl high school softball pitchers. My daughter played varsity softball for 4 years. If you wanna see some baseball players look silly, let them see a 70 mph rise ball from 43 feet. One of the tricks is to make sure they havent spent much time facing them before.


Ken
 
Last edited:
Poolmanis said:
Mastering pool also to highest level have similar obstacles. Often it is invisible to many.
Just to few examples.
Dirty/polished balls, old cloth, new cloth sliding effects, different rails play often a lot different. The effects are not so obvious than many other SPORTS, but they affect outcome and not knowing and adjusting properly to them will make players fail.
And you all know winner breaks format any miss can be your last. That is more cruel mental pressure compared to any other sports what cuesports have. You don't get equal chances.
In Golf if opponent make hole-in-one, you stll can try get even..
Click to expand...
You've never played much golf if any, have you? Nor shot in the 80's let alone the 70's on a regulation course of 6700-7200 yards, correct? Every golf course plays differently from every other golf course. You can get mud stuck on the ball and have to play it that way in a tournament, balls can get buried in a sand trap and have to get played, balls can drown in a watery grave called a lake or creek (penalty), every hole on a golf course plays differently from the other 17 holes. Try golf for at least a year without lessons.
You'll probably want to slit your wrists.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top