Seeking Input: Archer ‘93 vs. Today

Callaghan

Callaghan

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
As a result of a new TV purchase, I have access to a dedicated billiards tv channel that shows live and replay coverage of professional pool tournaments that have taken place over the last three or four years. It’s predominantly nine and 10 ball. As a result of this, I’ve actually started to take some time to watch what I would call “modern pool.” I’m pretty much a hacker myself, but I’ve been around the game enough and taken in enough Accustats videos to make some educated observations. Today’s top professionals, and even most of the mid-level professionals, play a very precise and consistently executed game. I have a lot of respect for it. That said, I can’t help but feel like the game is pretty sterile. I’m generally somebody who prefers to watch events from the mid 90s and earlier. Here’s my point, from my perspective, the players I watch today are really not light years ahead of what Johnny archer was doing at age 22 in 1993. In his match against Earl Strickland here, he’s putting on what I would consider to be a master class of nine ball play. And on a pretty tough table, too…. OK, not as tough as what is out there today, but these aren’t buckets:



I guess what I’m looking for is input from a lot of the more experienced and advanced players here to tell me what I may not be considering when making my observation. And, minor technicalities aside, I can’t help but feel like this match from 1993 has such a higher degree of excitement due to the variability in playing styles.

Appreciate the thoughts.
 
Archer and Earl in the 1990s are as good as anybody now- they are two of the greatest 9 ball players of all time.

On a side note, I remember Archer declaring that he was dedicating himself to playing full time again around a year ago. How is that going? Is he still playing tournament pool on a frequent basis?
 
westcoast said:
Archer and Earl in the 1990s are as good as anybody now- they are two of the greatest 9 ball players of all time.

On a side note, I remember Archer declaring that he was dedicating himself to playing full time again around a year ago. How is that going? Is he still playing tournament pool on a frequent basis?
Click to expand...
His name pops up a lot so i know he's playing some. Not anything like his old level but still damn good.
 
While we enjoy doing otherwise on AZB, players can really only be measured against their contemporaries.

Did Archer and Earl play with the technical excellence we get from guys like Gorst and Filler? No way, but so what? Today's players have a higher runout rate on 4" equipment than those of the 1990s had on 4 5/8" pockets, they break better, kick better and jump better, too. In one sense, there's no real comparison, as the level of cueing on display today has stretched the boundaries of excellence ....

... and yet there is a real comparison. Archer and Earl were among those setting the standard in the 1990s and must be recognized as legendary players of another era. They regularly met the challenges presented to them in their own era and, in that sense, they are the equals of Filler and Gorst.

As a pool fan of about 50 years, I'm not buying into the idea that the old timers were more exciting to watch than today's crop, but if you enjoy watching their matches the most, by all means you should.
 
Problem with pool is it's more pedantic than separating eggs. The game is biased towards _not_losing_. What you get is dead outs, or nothing. Great stuff to do - nada on the entertainment value.
 
sjm said:
While we enjoy doing otherwise on AZB, players can really only be measured against their contemporaries.

Did Archer and Earl play with the technical excellence we get from guys like Gorst and Filler? No way, but so what? Today's players have a higher runout rate on 4" equipment than those of the 1990s had on 4 5/8" pockets, they break better, kick better and jump better, too. In one sense, there's no real comparison, as the level of cueing on display today has stretched the boundaries of excellence ....

... and yet there is a real comparison. Archer and Earl were among those setting the standard in the 1990s and must be recognized as legendary players of another era. They regularly met the challenges presented to them in their own era and, in that sense, they are the equals of Filler and Gorst.

As a pool fan of about 50 years, I'm not buying into the idea that the old timers were more exciting to watch than today's crop, but if you enjoy watching their matches the most, by all means you should.
Click to expand...


Very good points. It’s an irrelevant question, but for the sake of discussion, would you agree that a guy like Archer or Strickland….transported to today in their prime would be at the top? My guess would be yes.
 
Callaghan said:
Very good points. It’s an irrelevant question, but for the sake of discussion, would you agree that a guy like Archer or Strickland….transported to today in their prime would be at the top? My guess would be yes.
Click to expand...
Yes. Absolutely.

Look at their accomplishments compared to today's players. They didn't get perfect shape but made up for it with creativity and shot making. People will always resort to watching old matches because it was much more entertaining.
 
Callaghan said:
Very good points. It’s an irrelevant question, but for the sake of discussion, would you agree that a guy like Archer or Strickland….transported to today in their prime would be at the top? My guess would be yes.
Click to expand...
I believe that the true champions of yesteryear would have adapted to the conditions in any era and would have been champions.

That is not, however, the same as saying that the best pool that the champions of the past ever displayed would have allowed them to compete on equal footing with today's superstars. Not even close!

The quality of instruction, the resources for learning the game, and the equipment today are better than what was available to champions of the past, but give guys like Sigel, Strickland, Varner, Archer, Hall and others access to all of it and they would be giving today's best a serious run for their money. After all, things like a) Accu-stats, b) Dr Dave, c) Sharivari, d) carbon fiber shafts, e) better break cues, f) better jump cues, g) better tables with better ball sets and better cushions, make playing excellence more attainable for the modern player than it was for many legends of yesteryear.

A champion is a champion, and what all champions have in common is that they have both the practice habits and the competitive pedigree to meet the challenges with which they are presented.
 
Fast cloth, better balls, layered tips, low deflection/carbon fibre shafts, template racks, and jump cues all contribute to the sterilization of nine ball imo. The fast cloth and layered tips means you don’t need a powerful stroke to get around the table anymore. Soft breaks, less aggressive shots, tighter pockets, more safety play, but less kicking battles because of the jump cue, and alternate breaks lead to a much less exciting game of nine ball imo.

Unless Shaw or Filler are playing I rarely watch now because generally the power offense is missing from the game.
 
billiards_watch said:
Yes. Absolutely.

Look at their accomplishments compared to today's players. They didn't get perfect shape but made up for it with creativity and shot making. People will always resort to watching old matches because it was much more entertaining.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but no. I'd say that over 98% of the straightest shooters our game has ever seen are playing now, and I do not agree that the players of yesteryear were more creative than those of today. The game has evolved and the level of cueing has skyrocketed. Both position play and shotmaking are way above what we saw in the 1990s.
 
Cicerone88 said:
Fast cloth, better balls, layered tips, low deflection/carbon fibre shafts, template racks, and jump cues all contribute to the sterilization of nine ball imo. The fast cloth and layered tips means you don’t need a powerful stroke to get around the table anymore. Soft breaks, less aggressive shots, tighter pockets, more safety play, but less kicking battles because of the jump cue, and alternate breaks lead to a much less exciting game of nine ball imo.

Unless Shaw or Filler are playing I rarely watch now because generally the power offense is missing from the game.
Click to expand...
This is it.
 
Cicerone88 said:
Fast cloth, better balls, layered tips, low deflection/carbon fibre shafts, template racks, and jump cues all contribute to the sterilization of nine ball imo. The fast cloth and layered tips means you don’t need a powerful stroke to get around the table anymore. Soft breaks, less aggressive shots, tighter pockets, more safety play, but less kicking battles because of the jump cue, and alternate breaks lead to a much less exciting game of nine ball imo.
Click to expand...
Definitely some truth here. As I've often argued before, the switch to 4" pockets has robbed 9ball of some of its identity as a "fast and loose" game.
 
sjm said:
Did Archer and Earl play with the technical excellence we get from guys like Gorst and Filler? No way, but so what?
Click to expand...
A bunch of Filipinos want to say hi.

The quantity of good players today are abundant but only a handful are world class. Back in the days the entire field was world class. We can even put a Mosconi Cup team with the players of the past and compare them to today. You will see how good the best players of the past are compared to today.

Even the players from the past are more talked about than any current player right now with the exception of SVB and Gorst. They are the only big draws.
 
I’m 64 years old. Was bitten by the pool bug around 9 years old. My first exposure to televised pool was Wide World of Sports in my mid-teens. Since that time, I have been a huge fan of professional pool and followed it as closely as I could.

As has been said, every time one of these threads begin, comparing players from different eras isn’t fair to any of the players being compared. They are all champions and would likely have been champions in any era they played.

With that being said, imo, todays players play a superior game to that played previously. Equipment and rules changes have made the game a bit different but the mental and physical abilities of today’s players is incredible. Pocketing, safety play, re-safety play, bumping balls, cue ball control and pattern play are, on the whole, better than ever before.

Archer was a great player. For about a decade, he did it as well as anyone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
Never was real fond of Johnny but from the sixties until today, he shot the most impressive single shot I have ever seen and it was part of a five shot series that was the greatest five consecutive shots I have ever seen.

Eight rail zee kick on a bar table with at least ten other balls on the table. He nailed it only for the perfectly struck fifteen ball not much more than a diamond from the pocket to run out of gas in the jaws without touching them. He had to kick off of the bottom rail with spin to get things started. The cue ball was maybe an inch off the rail and touching one of my balls. Joke on me, I had never heard of Johnny in my little backwater. The last dozen games we played remain some of the most intense if not the most intense I ever played.

Johnny on a good night was awesome. Strickland was always a threat to beat him if he didn't. Buddy Hall maybe better than both in a long battle on the big track.

Today's players are impressive in their own right but I don't know that they would beat any of those three with big bucks of their own money down and on the old style equipment." Maybe AI will tell us before too many years but where is the fun in that?

Hu
 
billiards_watch said:
A bunch of Filipinos want to say hi.

The quantity of good players today are abundant but only a handful are world class. Back in the days the entire field was world class. We can even put a Mosconi Cup team with the players of the past and compare them to today. You will see how good the best players of the past are compared to today.

Even the players from the past are more talked about than any current player right now with the exception of SVB and Gorst. They are the only big draws.
Click to expand...
At rotation pool, Filler is better than either Gorst or SVB, as he proved once again at the Derby City Classic, in which he finished higher than both in 9ball and 10ball and beating both in winning the 9ball titlle. Filler has the finest resume of any 27-year-old player in history. If you don't realize that, perhaps you don't follow today's pool at all.

I've been around pro pool since the 1960s and have been going to tournaments live since the 1970s, so I watched every significant player of the last 60 years play up close and personal. I don't need you to remind me who the players of yesteryear are or what the level of their play was.

As for the number of world class players in the two eras, it's just the opposite. The fields are deeper than ever today because there are five times as many world class players today that are capable of winning a major than in the past, when only a few of them were in the mix for the biggest titles. For every ridiculously straight shooter of 1993, there are at least five today.

Part of the reason is the globalization of pool which, for the most part has happened in the last ten years or so. World class players are popping up in every corner of the globe, and this was not the case in the 1990s. FYI, by 1993, the year referred to in this thread, the Filipino invasion was barely in motion and Filipino players had not yet accumulated many major titles.

You are the only person I have ever encountered that feels that the players of that period played better than those of today. I am in the camp of those that feel the old-timers are every bit as legendary as the players of today, but the game has reached heights that the players of those days never could have even imagined.
 
I'm of the strong opinion that there is no improvement amoungst the very best from generation to generation. The human body has not evolved in thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Gorst in 2024 is no better than Shane was in 2008 than Archer was in 1993 or Earl was in 1984 or Buddy Hall was in 1975 or Mosconi was in 1950.

This is visible in tournament/gambling when two generations meet. Archer, Busty, and Earl, all beat the crap out of Shane for a set or three. When an older pro has a flashback and plays just as good, or better, than the current top guy, that means the speed of both at their bests were about the same.

Take running for example, some smart people analyzed the runners from 1930 and the runners from today, and concluded the feet move just as quickly, and the difference in times has more to do with the shoes and ground surface. This was written about in the book The Sports Gene.

What we do have now is a more global system, so we have front row access to the best of the best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top