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Megan Smith is one of the top players on the highly competitive Northeastern Women's Tour and is currently attempting to break onto the WPBA tour. In her column, Megan will discuss her experiences as she strives to make it as a professional pool player. Megan's regular column for the NEWT tour can be found at www.susiecuebilliards.com/Tournaments/WPBA/MegansNews/megansnewtnewslist.htm. You can email Megan at megan@azbilliards.com | ||
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2001 WPBA Spring Classic
Thursday, April 27 2001 I'm feeling pretty frustrated right now since yesterday's results do not accurately reflect my abilities or efforts. I realize that even though my game continues to improve, I can't expect to get the results I want all the time. Yesterday was a bitter reminder of this fact. When the match began, I made few if any mistakes and jumped out to a lead. Then the tide turned when a couple of late in the rack errors gave my opponent a few easy games to get on the board. Now midway through the set, I maintained a positive attitude and patiently waited for the chance to make good things happen again. However, the rest of the match saw things get increasingly out of hand for me. Facing a dearth of runout opportunities, I failed to pull off several kicks and safeties and continued to leave my opponent outs which she gladly capitalized on. I saw the match slipping away, and felt like screaming to the pool gods, "NO! Don't do this to me! I played the right shot!! I tried my best!!" But as we all know, in this game it doesn't matter "how well you're playing" or how hard you tried. It's all about execution-- if you make mistakes, you can count on being punished and no matter what they say, all that matters in the end is the final score. With that in mind, my Thursday morning race to 9 became another piece of billiards lore and I was back on the practice tables trying to work out why I came up short. One very inspiring thing did happen today, though. After dining at the casino's Chinese restaurant I opened my fortune cookie and almost choked on my shrimp and steamed veggies when I read "grasp opportunities--you will win." What kind of a coincidence is that? As a typical superstitious pool player, I know it HAS to be a sign! Friday April 28 2001-- Today I have the received the dubious honor of playing Ewa Laurance in the first round of the one-loss bracket. No, that's not a misprint. Ewa was upset late last night in a hill-hill match with Alice Rim and will be my opponent this afternoon. While this does qualify as a decidedly tough draw, I am very confident in myself and feel equal to the challenge. Besides, she's obviously beatable if she's suffered a loss already. I will just go out there, do the best I can with what I have and try to have fun. Later in the week..... Well, despite my magnanimous approach to my match with Ewa the other day, I am currently dealing with the reality that I BLEW it royally and lost deplorably to her. I say deplorably because I know that I very well might have come out of that match the winner if I had played anywhere close to my present speed out there. Ewa was not in top form and made several mistakes of which I capitalized on only about half the time. On this tour, there are few things worse than handing over games and ultimately matches to top players, and that's mainly how I remember the match. Not to take anything away from Ewa, she's a world champion, but some of the mistakes I made amounted to a crippling six game swing or more. I did do some things right--I kicked well and played good safes, but when it came to capitalizing and just pumping in balls, I had lost my edge somewhere. The worst part of all believe it or not, was remembering that damn fortune cookie from last night and picturing this Confucious-looking guy laughing his ass off at me for not taking his advice. Anyway, in the past 36 hours I've come to a few conclusions about what happened out there. For one thing, I felt like something was out of kilter in my form and I was not confident in my pocketing ability. This could be from actually being out of line, or it could be an imagined flaw resulting from taking the heat. Either way, I didn't feel natural out there. This ties into my other realization which is that despite my confidence in my ability, I was sweating having drawn a top seeded pro so early on. Of course I was looking forward to getting another pro point, and upsetting Ewa would only have been the first of at least two matches that I'd need. I normally don't sweat the draw, but I felt myself make that classic mistake in this case. Here's what I've realized--I think that sometimes I put too much pressure on myself in the quest for my pro status. Dawn (Hopkins) related some personal experience to me and said that it took her a while to get her status, and that it happens when you stop caring about it so much. Advice well taken. Lately my focus has been and will continue to be this--it's necessary to work hard and be disciplined, but also to relax and have fun. After all, I chose to pursue this sport because I love everything about it, not because I want to have a heart attack before I turn 25. I get frustrated in instances like this where my results are incongruent with my skills, but I am not unique in this respect! There are, have been, and will continue to be players whose games continue to improve but hit temporary snags in tournaments. The key word here is TEMPORARY. Take for instance players like Monica Webb, Tiffany Nelson, Julie Kelly, Line Kjoersvik, or Nicole Mancini....they all probably possessed the skills to be top players for quite some time before they actually made their breakthroughs and now consistently perform more closely to their limitless potentials. These women are inspirations to me and I can come to terms with a disappointment like the one I was met with this weekend by reminding myself that my time will come as well. The path to success is strewn with those who became disheartened and gave up the fight. I will never be one of those casualties. As they say, "don't quit five minutes before the miracle happens!" By the way, Confucious isn't laughing anymore and I appreciate his advice...."Grasp opportunities, you will win!"
Till next time,
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