Chicks With SticksThe genius of Allison Fisher, and what to do about it.
Posted Monday, June 26, 2000, at 11:30 PM ET
One Monday night earlier this month, as I was flipping channels during the NBA finals (gimme a break, it was halftime), I wandered over to ESPN2 and became deeply engrossed in a sporting event in which I already knew the outcome. It was the final match of the Woman's Professional Billiards National Championship, between Vivian Villarreal, ranked No. 4 in the world, and Allison Fisher, the No. 1 player. They were playing best-of-seven nine-ball, which apparently has become the default pool game in both the men's and women's professional circuits. As you inveterate channel flippers already know, the game is played with the lowest nine balls, and the winner is the one who pockets the nine-ball. The trick, though, is that you have to hit the lowest numbered ball on the table first, and if you don't, it's a scratch. It's incredibly difficult to be a good nine-ball player, requiring near magical abilities to position the cue ball for the next shot. When good players are at the table, it can be a beautiful thing to watch.
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StumbleUponAnyway, back to The Deuce. At the point at which I tuned in, the score was something like 2-0 to Fisher. Half an hour later (with lots of commercials thrown in), it was over: Fisher had won 7-0. What made the match mesmerizing, though, wasn't the score, but the fact that Villarreal—who is, remember, the fourth-best in the world—did not pocket a single ball all night! This isn't just rare; it's unheard of. And it's not that Villarreal played poorly; she never got a chance to play at all. Fisher played so perfectly running the table virtually every game that her opponent only got one chance in the entire match to pocket a ball. Unfortunately, she scratched, after which, needless to say, Fisher ran the table.
Allison Fisher is the Tiger Woods, the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky, of nine-ball. Like them, she makes the impossible look easy, and the difficult routine. She can make fancy shots, but she usually doesn't have to, because she has the best cue ball control of any player I've ever seen. In fact, that's the most mind-boggling aspect of her game. She doesn't just get the cue ball to go in the general area that she wants—she places it exactly where she wants it to go. Think of Tiger's short game vs. everyone else's at the U.S. Open. Fisher's cue control is on the same level compared with the other women pros. The commentators always say she owes this skill to her background as a snooker player in England. (She's a Brit.) I wouldn't know; I've never seen snooker played. All I know is that whenever I see her play on ESPN or The Deuce, I feel compelled to watch. She validates my channel-flipping self.
Of course, that's the problem: If you happen to like professional nine-ball, the only way you can ever find it is by stumbling upon it accidentally. And even then, you're likely to get a rerun (the Fisher-Villarreal match had actually taken place in January and was being shown for the third time), or the semifinals of some tournament where you never find out when the finals are or who finally wins the damn thing. Even a fan like me knows that televised nine-ball is filler; what's annoying is the way they rub your nose in it. But as a fan, it's painful to see a player of Allison Fisher's genius being reduced to filler.
So here's my proposal to cure this state of affairs: Create televised tournaments in which men play against women. Think about it. Billiards is one sport where brute strength is of no particular advantage (except when breaking, but even then the advantage is minimal). What matters is touch, creative shot-making, instincts, etc.—all qualities where men have no advantage over women. You could promote the hell out of it. You could offer purses that were higher than the paltry $15,000 or so that is the current norm. You could turn billiards into something that people might actually tune into and watch: The Nine-Ball Battle of the Sexes! Sure it's sheer hucksterism. But, hey, how many Americans watched tennis on television before Billie Jean King thrashed Bobby Riggs?
I've got a call in to the flack at the women's tour to get her reaction to this idea. When I hear from her, I'll report back. In the meantime, I note from the Women's Professional Billiards Association Web site that Allison Fisher will be playing Gerda Hofstatter (ranked No. 2) on ESPN July 25 at 9 p.m. (The actual tournament, of course, took place two months ago. But never mind.) If you happen to be channel flipping than night and come across it, I encourage you to watch some of it. You'll be amazed.
Click here for more on a billiards Battle of the Sexes.
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Reader Response from The Fray:
I had the good fortune to see the match between Villarreal and Fisher in person at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant. Ms Fisher was incredible. I have been playing pool for over forty years and have never witnessed a match (much less one for a championship) in which one player so dominated the play. Both players were gracious and talked with fans both before and after the match. It may be of interest to note that early in the week during the practice rounds for many of these tournaments there is a night in which you can challenge the pros to a match. I found this out too late to compete at Mt Pleasant but I look forward to the next time the WPBA plays near my home. It would be an honor to play against any of these fine players and from my conversations with many of them it would also be just plain fun.
--Grant Griswold
(To reply, click here.)
I've seen Allison Fisher play--on TV and in person--and she's everything you say she is. I doubt that there's a male (or female) billiards or 9-ball player out there who can beat her. She vindicates the proposition that professional billiards should be a unisex sport. Allison certainly provides a valid opportunity to try it out!
As for snooker: it's played on a larger table, with smaller balls and the rails of the pockets are rounded. This means that the player must be extremely precise is shooting the object ball and placing the cue ball. If you play a couple of games of snooker and then go play "normal" billiards, you'll play like a pro (for a little while).
--Grant
(To reply, click here.)
I, too, have flipped the channel and found the women's nine-ball matches. However, I often look for them because I'm a very big fan. I grew up playing a little (misspent youth) and still play a little (misspent middle-age). The article commented on Allison's background playing snooker in England, where this unique and peculiar game of billiards is almost as popular as soccer. As a teenager here in America, I used to play snooker and found it to be one of the toughest games on any table. Snooker balls, twenty-two of them, counting the cue ball, are one eighth inch smaller than conventional billiard balls and the pockets (or pots as they're called in England) are about one-half inch smaller. You do the math. It's darned hard to put those little suckers in those amazingly small holes. That would be hard enough but you have to navigate a table that is littered with all of those balls for much of the game.
--David Kloth
(To reply, click here.)
Men vs Women pool has been tried before, and it will simply never work, because the skill disparity is too great. Allison Fisher is not the best 9-ball player in the world--she's the best woman right now, but probably wouldn't rank in the top 20 on the men's circuit. Part of that is strength--the break is very important in 9-ball, and the players with the hardest break have a much easier time of it. But part is something else, and I won't try to guess what it is. But the fact is that women just aren't very competitive against men. Even good amateur men routinely run 3 or 4 racks at 9-ball, and the pros do it every night. Earl Strickland ran 11 racks without missing to win the first $1 million prize in pool. In straight pool, which requires no strength at all and is very much a finesse game, the highest recorded run for a woman is something like 89 balls, whereas the highest run for a man is 562 by Willie Mosconi, and pro men's matches often record runs over 100 balls, even at the amateur level. Pros quite often win their match by running 150 balls and out, almost double the highest-ever recorded female score. I have no idea why the women can't perform at the same level as the men, but the fact is that they can't. Perhaps a mixed doubles tournament would be a better choice for promotion.
--Dan
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A correction. Nine ball is not billiards. Snooker is not billiards. Billiards is played with only three balls--a cue ball and usually two different coloured balls. It is probably the most aesthetically pleasing of all the cueball sports. Points are made by carom--that is, a combination shot--hitting the other two balls with the cue ball in the same shot. The use of "effect", or what my father used to refer to as "yakapina" (where you hit the cue ball with the tip of the cue to deliver it to a new position) is at its apex here. True billiard tables are a work of art and do not possess pockets.
Secondly, playing on a snooker table (6 by 12 feet), before playing on the smaller "Boston" table (4 by 8 feet) is a trick used by a lot of hustlers to sucker in players who think they're the "cat's meow" at pool. It's like Tiger Woods putting on regular-sized greens for a morning, and then going to a mini-putt course to play. This is not to take anything away from Ms Fisher. But, I'm sure all that training on a snooker table makes nine ball seem like a cakewalk to her.
--Michael Kleiza
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Joe Nocera says high-mindedly that billiards genius Allison Fisher should get more press just for the pure thrill of her skill, but it appears from the photo accompanying Nocera's article that she's a looker too, which is certainly why she will get press if she ever does. Look at Anna Kournikova. But what's wrong with that here? Fisher apparently has the talent to justify the attention, which Kournikova certainly doesn't.
--Richard Riley
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(6/27)