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| Two weeks after Earl Strickland won the Riviera Hotel Pro 8-Ball Open in Las Vegas Nevada, we had the pleasure of conducting an interview with him. This is the second part of that interview, the first part is available here and the last part is available here. | ||
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AZB: Although the WPBA is getting some time on TV, there is still very little television coverage of the game of billiards. What do you think needs to happen to make pool more interesting to TV viewers? Earl: Boy, you're asking me questions now that I could really blow up about. I'm not gonna get into that. I'm gonna say no comment. AZB: I understand you are a pretty good tennis player. Do you think Pool will ever reach the same status as Tennis? Earl: That's a real funny one there, I'll tell you. You're right, I've been playing tennis for 25 years. I've been a member of the USTA for a long time. I love the game and I watch it all the time. Those Williams sisters are just fantastic. I read in the paper the other day that women's tennis is outranking men's tennis. Well they better get a grip on themselves if they think that women's tennis can ever outrank men's tennis. They're wrong. And it will never happen in pool either, because the depth is just too strong. The men's game is just so powerful. But if they want to co-ed it, I'll guarantee you that none of the women can win against the men. And that is what they keep thinking about pool too. It's really the same as tennis, racing, basketball, football, baseball or any other sport. If you make the matches long, you can forget it. The women just can't hold up with the men. The men's breaks are too strong, their safety game is too strong, their shotmaking is too strong. No, to answer your question, I don't think pool will ever reach the status of tennis. I could say why, but I'm just gonna leave it at that. I'm not gonna get into that because I would just make people mad. AZB: The Camel Pro Billiards Series enforces the break box rule. How do you think this has affected the game of professional 9-Ball? Earl: The break box has been a great equalizer. There are so many guys that can break from the side and look like great players, especially where we are playing from. We're playing from inside the 2 diamonds on the bottom rail. We're not actually on the diamonds, we're inside the 2 diamonds. We are actually inside the 2 outside diamonds on the bottom rail by 3 or 4 inches. So the break box is even more narrow than you actually imagine. It is actually such a great equalizer that it only favors people that have such an outrageous break that it's crazy. Like if the women played matches from the box we break from, and the tables got a little bit wet or sticky or something where the balls didn't break well, it would be like watching grass grow. Believe me, it would be tough for them to play a match out of that break box. Especially under sticky wet conditions like a lot of the tournaments get. Because we don't control the elements in the buildings we play in. The break box is an equalizer. It makes the better players have a better chance. Even from the side break, the best players are still going to win. But some of your better players will get beat much easier from the side break than they will from the middle. And you've got to have more knowledge to play from the middle. You've got to know how to move the cue ball a little bit more and find a spot to make balls on the break. The speed to hit them and stuff. There is a lot more to the game of breaking from the middle. Other than Francisco Bustamante, he has just got the hardest break in the world and it doesn't matter where he puts the ball up there because he is going to make one. He is the dead favorite as long as he is playing well. You've got to put it all together though; just like golf or tennis or anything. You've got to get up there and break well. When you get an opportunity to run out, you've got to run out well. When you get a safety, you've got to execute a good safety. Not one that's just mediocre. You've got to make sure to stick the guy where he's got to go two rails or make a long kick. You've got to force the issue playing from that middle break more than from the side break cause you're running more racks from the side break. It's more offensive from the side break. And breaking from the middle, even the patterns come up more difficult. Even if you make a ball on the break, you might have to play safe. You might not get the opportunity to run out. So, there again, it is just bringing more playing to the game. My honest opinion is that it should be a race to 15 in all formats. 9-Ball or 8-Ball should be a race to 15 with a 30 second shot clock, break from the box. Those would be the greatest pool matches on earth there. That gives you time enough to overcome adversity. Races to 7 and races to 9 and races to 11 are so short now with the growth of the game and the way people are playing now. There are kids out there playing on coke boxes that are just running out, you know what I mean? Like I was back in the 70s. I used to slide a coke box around the table. You remember the old 24 bottle coke boxes or crates that used to have individual slots for each bottle? They don't exist anymore. A lot of people don't know what those are anymore. I used to slide one of those around because when I was like 10, I was only like 2 feet tall. It was unbelievable how short I was at 10 years old. And I used to have to stand on a coke box and slide it around to shoot the shots. That's why my arm didn't get sideways. It stayed straight. But anyway, the way these kids are learning to play, they are so much smarter. They are playing safeties and they're intelligent; they're not dumb players these days, you know what I mean? And they run out, they break like Bustamante, every one of them. People didn't have breaks like that and they didn't play that good at an early age when I was growing up. There were few people like that and now they are a dime a dozen. You're getting beat by people you don't even know, it's crazy. So, you've got to extend the matches. If you don't extend the matches, you're defeating the purpose. That's what is happening in pool right now. They've got to extend the matches to protect the best players. The players that have been there for a long time. You can't let a guy that has been playing for 2 year come in and run over a veteran player. It doesn't make sense. And that is what's happening in pool. It ain't like that in tennis because the format is long enough to protect the better player. In racing, the format is long enough to protect the better racer. In golf, there are 72 holes to protect the better player. And then when they play a tougher course, it protects the better player. Those things are implemented in other sports simply to protect the people in the sport that really draw the audience. That's not happening in pool. They're actually protecting and promoting the weaker player. And it's wrong. I can't understand that. That's just not right. AZB: Why do you think they would do that? Earl: Well, because they want the match to get over in a hurry. And they don't want to enforce any shot clock rules. This is my opinion or my theory and I think it is pretty legitimate. I think that they should enforce a shot clock and then you can play as long a match as you want to and it will finish at a certain time, right on the button. Without the shot clock rule, they let people play at their own leisure. And a lot of guys are slow. More than half the guys are too slow in the game. So, you've got a problem. You've got to force the issue with them. And that's how you can make the game right. You can't let a guy go in and play at his own leisure. He is not going to obey and play by the rules. If you say "You've got to play faster", it goes in one ear and out the other one. He doesn't care. As long as you're not enforcing the shot clock rule, he will not shoot when you tell him to. There's a shot clock in basketball and there is a shot clock in tennis. There is a shot clock in most sports, so there has got to be a shot clock in pool. And I think on a marketing level, for television, it's very imperative. There is no question about that. If you let people play on TV and take that kind of time, people with millions of channels are just going to turn the channel. Because they are not going to stand there and watch you scratch your head and pick lint off the table and shake your head sideways like you've been doing this all your life and all at once you're brain dead. So I'm just trying to say that on a marketing level, for television and viewership out there for millions of people that are not knowledgeable pool fans, it's very important for them. The intellectual people and the middle class, even the blue collar. I've screamed about this for 20 years and they've looked at me and just laughed. They think that I'm trying to enforce this rule strictly for my own benefit. That's what they said. I just disagree with it. Pool would be at a higher stage right now as far as participation from the general public. People that don't know anything about pool or don't follow the game, would be more interested in the game now if we went by some of these rules that I suggested years ago. I also really believe that a race on TV has got to be a little longer. They have got to go to at least 9. 9 has got to be a minimum. 7 is just ridiculous. You can't ever tell who plays the best in 7. A few bad breaks here and there can just destroy you. And you can't recover from that. You know, pool isn't like golf where you can make a few bogeys and you have 60 more holes to go to make it up. It ain't like that at all. You're playing against the table, the player and the audience. It's the kind of game where no one is protecting you. You are really on your own in pool.
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