The match of the season so far

On Sunday afternoon I had my rematch against Wayne, the guy who I lost to in my first match in the Straight Pool League.  Due to the closeness in handicap, he was spotting me four balls - he had to get to 75 while I needed 71 to win.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been reading a lot about how to restructure one's fundamentals at the pool table - stance, stroke, warm-up strokes, etc.  Because I do not do much practicing between matches, I made the (kind of silly) decision to try to work on my fundamentals while playing the match.

As a result, I started missing shots from the very beginning.  Wayne was shooting well, and even though my safeties were okay, and I would get advantageous positions on the table (my turn to shoot, several balls spread out and makeable), I would only make two or three balls before handing the table back to him.  It reminded me of a chess player who can often get an advantage in the middlegame, but since he does not know how to convert it to a winning edge, he loses the game anyway.  It is very frustrating.  But, I kept my sense of humour about it all, and tried to keep things in perspective.  Wayne is a nice guy, and there are worse ways to spend a couple hours than to shoot pool.

One interesting note is that Wayne never commented on the pace of my play - partly because he tended to take about as much time as I did on shots.

At one point in the match, I looked up at the score and saw that I was down by about 30 balls.  He had 60 and I had around 29 or so.  It was going pretty badly.  At that moment, I decided to stop concentrating on the stuff I had read and just shoot pool the way I had been doing it before that day.  Suddenly I found myself able to make shots with a bit more confidence.  After I ran a few balls and then played a good safety (leaving Wayne no shot), I looked at him and said, "I come from the 'too little too late' school of Straight Pool".  I figured all I was doing was making the final score a bit closer.

However, at one point I ran 15 balls in a row, easily my high for this league, and I began to think that if I kept playing carefully, I might work my way back into the match.  When I had a very tough break shot lined up, I decided to play safe (all Wayne needed at that point was 4 balls, while I needed about 20).  Even so, he had his chances to make the last few balls, but I think that my keeping him away from the table and out of his rhythm affected him a bit.  He missed a couple of easy-ish shots that could have ended it.

Going into the last rack, he had 73 balls and I had 60.  If I could make 11 balls before he made 2, I would complete an incredible comeback.  I played as carefully as I could, making balls while trying not to leave him anything if I missed.  (I even played a safety where no ball hit the rail, which cost me a point.  Now I needed 12 balls in the rack to win.)  At one point in the rack, he had a shot lined up on the rail.  If he made that shot, his last shot would have been straight into the side for the game.  He rattled the pocket, though, and I was able to make the two balls instead.  Not only did I make those two, I ran out the rest of the rack!

When I looked up after making the last ball of the rack, Wayne congratulated me on an amazing comeback.  I had not even processed that I had won the game, but the score at that point was 73-73 (The rule is that even if you make your winning ball, you keep going until you finish the run.  I actually should have kept going into the next rack, but neither one of us thought about that at the time).  Because of the handicap difference, this meant that I had come all the way back to win!

So, now the missing match against the guy who did not want to play looms large.  Frank had said that he would pair me up against someone else if I had a chance at the playoffs (which I think I do).  It seems strange that I would not get to play the person that had played everyone else, but whatever happens, happens.  I will have fun with it regardless, and a playoff berth (if it happens) will be that much more enjoyable.