Yeah I’ve seen Manny play a few times on YouTube. That’s the thing… doing what it takes. Many pit falls can get in the way of promising talent. Some pit falls not necessarily bad… education, job, or both.
Stories about the first time talent was recognized?
- Thread starter DaWizard
- Start date
I was on a European trip with my wife in 2014 and there just happened to be a Eurotour event close to where I was in Slovenia. After the players meeting I was hitting some balls by myself when a couple kids came up to me and asked if I wanted to play their friend for some money. I looked over to their friend who looked pretty young so I kind of felt bad, however they convinced me that it was okay as he plays with the adults all the time. He proceeds to beat me 9-3 for 100 euros in about 30 mins. I came home telling people how good this kid was. They believed me when he started winning everything as it was 15 year old Josh Filler.
If that was the Slovenian Open of August 2014, Filler was 16 (and only about 6 weeks shy of 17).
He still looked like 15 even when he was 20!
My sincere and deepest apologies for getting his age wrong by one year.
Okay, you're forgiven this time. But don't befoul these pages again with such significant numerical blunders.
Sad story.I'm not exactly answering the question from the perspective of first seeing the talent of an up and comer, instead I'll tell you about when I first saw elite talent up close and personal. Prior to this night, I thought I could reel in the greats IF I just put in the time. Now, in the back of my mind, I think I knew I wasn't willing to put in the necessary timebut still -- I thought I could technically get there. Which was a nice comfortable thought to walk around with. You see, I just hadn't seen an extended display of world-class pool while standing table side. I'd seen some of the greats playing matches but a match setting can mask the overall talent. Unless of course you watch for a long time and you really know what you're watching.
Anyway, I worked in a pool hall and the local great, who I got to know a bit and heard quite a few road stories from, also worked there. But he hadn't been playing a lot of pool at this time, until he sort of got the itch to play. I don't recall what piqued his interest, may have been the room owner wanting to stake him in the US Open. So he began intruding on my after hours practice time. It was always cool playing after hours because I'd turn off all the lights except for the table lights on the shimmed up table in the front of the room.
He had my speed gauged accurately and he gave me a few pointers here and there but one night he just asked if I would mind just racking for him for a bit while he played the 9 Ball Ghost. Now today's ghost is a totally different animal than the ghost played in the 90's. Today players get perfect racks and nice spreads. If you dial in the break you don't even have to deal with clusters. Not so back then with the wooden racks.
I would just rack them as good as an almost B player could and he would SMASH the rack and squat the cue ball. But I swear every single rack had a puzzle that had to be solved, a cluster that had to be nudged, or a crazy multi-rail positional route that the cue ball would have to travel. I placed those balls in that wooden triangle rack after rack, and watched him slide his coin around the entire table and then some while working through 13 racks in a row.
It was so far beyond anything I had seen accomplished on a pool table up until then. For him, it didn't seem like a big deal. His exact words have escaped my memory, but he said something about "getting closer to being back in stroke." It was all very sobering for this delusional pool player.
I enlisted in the Air Force a few months later.
Michigan's Nathan Haddad was a really good player that could have had a good career if "things" could have gone his way. He had his struggles but he always had a smile on his face.