I must have caught it in the one year it was free then, I thought it was free up till a few years ago. The thing with the pro players is that we have a ton of free events to go see them at, and also to play with casually. I went to many local tournaments with world champions that played, Joss tours, Predator tours, the old Seminole tour, etc...
A lot harder to visit Brady and toss the ball with him, but I played on Jayson Shaw's personal table in his pool room a few times, and matched up with Dechaine at Snookers. As I'm sure many of us have done similar things.