SJM at the Las Vegas Open

[sjm]

Great read, sjm. You’re touching on something that doesn’t get talked about enough in pool, which is the family engine behind young talent.

About Savannah,16 is such a pivotal stage of transition to adulthood. Families like hers are often operating on pure belief and sacrifice. International travel isn’t cheap, and it adds up quickly. But it's an investment in experience as much as trophies. Exposure to different styles, pressure situations, and cultures can fast-track maturity in a way local events just can't. You see that same dynamic with players like Sam Henderson. When a family rallies behind a player, it creates stability. That support system becomes a competitive edge. I think Sam will be focusing on opportunities here in the U.S., which are multiplying more than they were a decade ago, which makes strategic and economic sense.

The fading of pool politics really does feel refreshing. When the focus shifts back to pure competition, the sport shines brightest when the drama stays on the table. Looks like that is happening more and more with the players being able to pick and choose which event is best for their career and their pocketbook.

A few years ago, when Keith McCready was asked who he believed was the best player in the world at that moment, he didn’t hesitate. His answer was Joshua Filler. Keith had been watching Filler compete online at a Matchroom event (pre-WNT) and was struck by what he saw. In his view, Filler’s fundamentals stood above the rest, and he predicted that Joshua would be the toughest player to beat in the years ahead. Keith remarked that he liked the way Filler long-stroked a ball, whatever that means. But what sets Filler apart isn't just his shot-making ability. Under pressure, nothing changes.

We have all seen dynamic young champions burst onto the scene only to fade. Filler is following a different path. He's improved. He has became more disciplined, more refined, more complete. That’s what a seasoned eye like Keith’s recognized early on. Spotting raw talent is one thing. Recognizing lasting greatness is another.

Great post! It's a very tricky topic.

I think it's great that Savannah has a solid network behind her. Some begrudge the fact that she makes way more money than others that can give her a few games on the wire, but I think it's great.

Maybe she'll become a world class player, but nobody in their right mind would call her that at present. While she's been hyped as if she were a future world champion, I have yet to see anything from her that would lead me to believe she will ever get there. As a regular around pro circles since the 1970s, I watched all of Jean Balukas, Loree Jon Jones, Siming Chen, Han Yu, Ga Young Kim, and Jasmin Ouschan play at sixteen years old, and the sixteen-year-old Savannah doesn't wow me the way any of them did. Of course, that doesn't mean she can't be counted as a superstar one day, but relative to the others I mentioned, she is on a very slow track.

The danger for Savannah is that the overhype will get to her head and lessen her sense of urgency to improve. Not even Jean Balukas was making much money before she was winning tournaments, and it kept her hungry. As you note, many teen phenoms burst onto the scene, and most of them achieve something nice but fail to reach the highest heights of stardom. Examples of such American players include Monica Webb, April Larson and Briana Miller, all of them very accomplished players but each a little light in the title count.

As you note, the Filler comparison is useful here. Josh ran over 290 balls at straight pool by age 14. He was already winning big titles in Germany, one of the world's strongest pool playing nations, in his teens. Allen Hopkins told me long ago that if a player hasn't shown signs of world championship level speed by the age of eighteen, the odds are they will never get there. I remember, at first, wondering whether he was right, but I've come to agree with him.

The great ones like Keith can identify a generational talent quite effortlessly. Thorsten Hohmann saw it, too, and mentioned Josh Filler to me as early as 2009, when Josh was just 12, as a future German world champion that would likely follow in the giant footsteps of Ortmann, Souquet and, of course, Hohmann himself. Keith and Thorsten just knew! The rest of us didn't know until later.

Savannah, though sometimes a bit moody at the table, is actually quite charismatic off the table, and that will surely help her. The attention she is getting both helps and hurts her, but like every other American, I'd like to see an American female player emerge as one of the best, and Savannah, because she makes a good income, will have advantages over many of her fellow competitors as tournament participation costs will likely not obstruct her playing in a wide array of events.

Like every other American fan, I'm rooting hard for Savannah to, one day, be counted among the elite, but I am not delusional and won't overstate her accomplishments just because she is American. Wishing her the best.

 

[Kris_b1104]

Some of you are being a little harsh on a 16 year old girl who's prefrontal cortex has not even fully developed yet.

Obviously she needs to work on her mannerism and body language when losing, but that will come with time, which she has a lot of.

Being mad that she is being monetized by her parents is asinine. You want all pool players to end up broke like Johnny Archer and can't even pay someone back when they lose a bet?

I wish most pros got into selling merch and took advantage of their likeness, instead of depending on tournament winnings to get by and survive. This is why I don't get offended by Fedor treating it like a business, he's setting himself up for the future and making sure he has money to fall back on if he's having a bad year on the pool table. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It's not like they're overdoing the merch either, on Easton's website, she is only selling Taom products and 3seconds gloves, which she is sponsored by. They are not trying to rip people off by creating an $800 shaft just because they have the name to do so. Her parents are also not begging for handouts and asking for donations.

You guys should want pool players to succeed financially, on and off the table, considering how dirt cheap they get paid for all their travel expenses/entry fees/hard work. Most pool pros of the past have ended up broke due to poor financial decisions or only relying on tournament/sponsorship money. If they had invested in themselves, they would be in a much better situation.

Hopefully Savannah's skills/abilities will catch up to her fame and even surpass it. I'm sure it will.

 

[overlord]

Kind of agree about her body language and, as I noted, her progress is slow relative to many of the teenaged phenoms I've seen over the years. Still, as a technician, she has progressed. She has become a bit more patient at the table, gaining with defense a little more often, and her patterns have improved. She's not yet elite, but you need to look closer if you don't see any development here.

Like AJ Manas on the men's side, Savannah needs to avoid reading her press clippings. Neither has accomplished much at pool's majors, but you'd never know it from reading their headlines.

I believe that AJ Manas beat Dennis Orcollo race to 27 in the PI for the money.

 

[overlord]

Great post! It's a very tricky topic.

I think it's great that Savannah has a solid network behind her. Some begrudge the fact that she makes way more money than others that can give her a few games on the wire, but I think it's great.

Maybe she'll become a world class player, but nobody in their right mind would call her that at present. While she's been hyped as if she were a future world champion, I have yet to see anything from her that would lead me to believe she will ever get there. As a regular around pro circles since the 1970s, I watched all of Jean Balukas, Loree Jon Jones, Siming Chen, Han Yu, Ga Young Kim, and Jasmin Ouschan play at sixteen years old, and the sixteen-year-old Savannah doesn't wow me the way any of them did. Of course, that doesn't mean she can't be counted as a superstar one day, but relative to the others I mentioned, she is on a very slow track.

The danger for Savannah is that the overhype will get to her head and lessen her sense of urgency to improve. Not even Jean Balukas was making much money before she was winning tournaments, and it kept her hungry. As you note, many teen phenoms burst onto the scene, and most of them achieve something nice but fail to reach the highest heights of stardom. Examples of such American players include Monica Webb, April Larson and Briana Miller, all of them very accomplished players but each a little light in the title count.

As you note, the Filler comparison is useful here. Josh ran over 290 balls at straight pool by age 14. He was already winning big titles in Germany, one of the world's strongest pool playing nations, in his teens. Allen Hopkins told me long ago that if a player hasn't shown signs of world championship level speed by the age of eighteen, the odds are they will never get there. I remember, at first, wondering whether he was right, but I've come to agree with him.

The great ones like Keith can identify a generational talent quite effortlessly. Thorsten Hohmann saw it, too, and mentioned Josh Filler to me as early as 2009, when Josh was just 12, as a future German world champion that would likely follow in the giant footsteps of Ortmann, Souquet and, of course, Hohmann himself. Keith and Thorsten just knew! The rest of us didn't know until later.

Savannah, though sometimes a bit moody at the table, is actually quite charismatic off the table, and that will surely help her. The attention she is getting both helps and hurts her, but like every other American, I'd like to see an American female player emerge as one of the best, and Savannah, because she makes a good income, will have advantages over many of her fellow competitors as tournament participation costs will likely not obstruct her playing in a wide array of events.

Like every other American fan, I'm rooting hard for Savannah to, one day, be counted among the elite, but I am not delusional and won't overstate her accomplishments just because she is American. Wishing her the best.

According to the interview with Scott Frost Christina Tkach was forced by her father to play serious pool from the age of 8.

 

[Protractor]

I was there on Wednesday and watched Savannah warm up and then play Albert Januarta in the Juniors and she seemed to be getting into her own head. Never missed a shot during warm up, then started missing routine shots into the corners during the match and lost 0-2. I don't know who is coaching her besides her dad but based on watching her matches for some time it looks like she needs to learn to better manage the mental/pressure aspect. She undoubtedly is under great external pressure but needs to learn to avoid putting undue pressure on herself on top of that.

As a parallel, US figure skater prodigy Alysa Lui quit competing at age 16, then returned to competition recently at age 24 and nailed the gold medal in this round of the Olympics with an effortless performance, smiling the entire time. She was asked by a reporter afterwards how she "deals with Olympic pressure" and her response was “You’re going to have to explain to me what Olympic pressure is. Like, who’s giving it? What’s the pressure?” She also said that she went into it not caring that it was a competition and just wanted to show everyone what she had been working on lol.

The lesson is that you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. Watching Filler play at the open was a study in contrasts.

 

[middleofnowhere]

I was there on Wednesday and watched Savannah warm up and then play Albert Januarta in the Juniors and she seemed to be getting into her own head. Never missed a shot during warm up, then started missing routine shots into the corners during the match and lost 0-2. I don't know who is coaching her besides her dad but based on watching her matches for some time it looks like she needs to learn to better manage the mental/pressure aspect. She undoubtedly is under great external pressure but needs to learn to avoid putting undue pressure on herself on top of that.

As a parallel, US figure skater prodigy Alysa Lui quit competing at age 16, then returned to competition recently at age 24 and nailed the gold medal in this round of the Olympics with an effortless performance, smiling the entire time. She was asked by a reporter afterwards how she "deals with Olympic pressure" and her response was “You’re going to have to explain to me what Olympic pressure is. Like, who’s giving it? What’s the pressure?” She also said that she went into it not caring that it was a competition and just wanted to show everyone what she had been working on lol.

The lesson is that you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. Watching Filler play at the open was a study in contrasts.

As I mentioned in my other post regarding high school athletes when they get to college and they're playing against equal competition or even better competition a lot of them have a real reality check.

Regarding Savannah, 90% of the interest in her is the fact of her age and she's a novelty. The novelty wears off when she's older. At that point the only interest in her will be if she can rack up tournament wins. 3rd 4th 5th place finishes will not do it she has to win and keep winning. That's a lot of pressure.

 

[Protractor]

As I mentioned in my other post regarding high school athletes when they get to college and they're playing against equal competition or even better competition a lot of them have a real reality check.

Regarding Savannah, 90% of the interest in her is the fact of her age and she's a novelty. The novelty wears off when she's older. At that point the only interest in her will be if she can rack up tournament wins. 3rd 4th 5th place finishes will not do it she has to win and keep winning. That's a lot of pressure.

She is only going to rack up wins if she learns to manage the external and internal pressure.

 

[alphadog]

Some of you are being a little harsh on a 16 year old girl who's prefrontal cortex has not even fully developed yet.

Obviously she needs to work on her mannerism and body language when losing, but that will come with time, which she has a lot of.

Being mad that she is being monetized by her parents is asinine. You want all pool players to end up broke like Johnny Archer and can't even pay someone back when they lose a bet?

I wish most pros got into selling merch and took advantage of their likeness, instead of depending on tournament winnings to get by and survive. This is why I don't get offended by Fedor treating it like a business, he's setting himself up for the future and making sure he has money to fall back on if he's having a bad year on the pool table. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It's not like they're overdoing the merch either, on Easton's website, she is only selling Taom products and 3seconds gloves, which she is sponsored by. They are not trying to rip people off by creating an $800 shaft just because they have the name to do so. Her parents are also not begging for handouts and asking for donations.

You guys should want pool players to succeed financially, on and off the table, considering how dirt cheap they get paid for all their travel expenses/entry fees/hard work. Most pool pros of the past have ended up broke due to poor financial decisions or only relying on tournament/sponsorship money. If they had invested in themselves, they would be in a much better situation.

Hopefully Savannah's skills/abilities will catch up to her fame and even surpass it. I'm sure it will.

View attachment 886276

I love having someone like The Roadrunner representing pool. As for her development I believe it will come if she does not burn out first. She still has 2 years before she hits the "by 18" barometer some are putting out there.
She will continue to get battle hardened


As for comparisons to many prior young female players that was then this now and I believe the rise in the level of competition in the ladies tournaments exceeds that of the men's. And she is often competing against the men.

 

[middleofnowhere]

Just a a little story from the past. It was a young girl in Florida from the Tampa area and she could really play. She's playing in a Grady Matthews tournament that has a women's division and she happens to be playing my wife.

Anyway my wife ends up beating her which is not a big surprise my wife had just lost a hill hill to Lori John to get on the loser side so my wife could really play.
Her father started yelling at her and she walked away. Couple hours later I passed them in the hall of the hotel and the father is still yelling at her. I don't know how much longer she played but I know she essentially disappeared from any of the women's pool tournaments.

I just now tried looking her up and I couldn't find anything on her other than some old pictures from way back when. I seriously doubt she has ever played pool since she was probably 17 or 18. She was actually talented even beating Dennis Hatch once 11 to 2 and a men's tournament. I'm sure he probably remembers that.

 

[sjm]

I believe that AJ Manas beat Dennis Orcollo race to 27 in the PI for the money.

Nobody is suggesting that Manas won't get there, but there is no denying that his performance in pool's majors to date offers little to get excited about. There's a difference between potential and performance. Last week, Manas failed to get out of round 1 at the Matchroom PLP event, so he has not yet proven he is at the level of the WNT's best.

I didn't know that Orcullo still competed at a high level. Th last time I saw him play was in what I believe was the 2024 China Open, and I wasn't terribly impressed. Dennis stopped playing the world circuit several years ago despite the fact that most Matchroom majors and many WPA majors are played outside of the United States.

I won't say that, to validate his pedigree, AJ has to win a Matchroom major this year, but I want to see him reach the final four at one of the Matchroom majors before I jump on the bandwagon. Last I checked, he was about the twentieth best player from the Philippines based on Fargo.

AJ's potential is obvious. His game has a nice flow to it and his instant pattern recognition brings to mind a Filler, Shaw, or Centeno. His game, however, is still very raw and underdeveloped. He can beat anyone for sure, but I could say that of at least 100 players.

Based on Fargo, AJ is the #69 male player in the world and Savannah is the #66 female player in the world, so it is an interesting comparison.

 

[jbart65]

I think Savannah has improved a lot in the past year, as sjm noted. She is more competitive with top players.

The mental part of the game might be the toughest of all - it's why Niels Feijin has made it the focus of his pool instruction.

Pool players have to be like a baseball hitter or pro cornerback. You are not going to get a hit 70% of the time. You are not going to prevent every touchdown pass. You have to leave a bad at bat or bad defensive football play behind immediately. Or it will cost you again and again.

It's not easy in pool. There's so many shots - far more than a baseball batter or cornerback will be involved in.

I still see pool pros get visibly frustrated, with their games suffering. Even the very best and experienced pros. It's not just young girls.

 

[Bob Jewett]

... and the father is still yelling at her....

Double edged sword.... She might never have gotten as good as she was without the yelling and then it drove her away.