Snooker- Or, Sports vs. Games
Commonplace Newsletter #87
There are many serious and supposedly important things happening in the world right now. But they don’t especially interest me, and the news- as I have outlined before- is something that I think is largely best avoided. So rather than join the multitudes writing thinkpieces on whatever this weeks’ controversy or cause celebre is, I am instead going to talk about snooker. Because, well, why not? What’s the point in carving out a position where I can write about whatever I want if I don’t actually write about whatever spontaneously catches my fancy? If I can’t see a man with a pomade-slick and fooling-no-one combover toting a snooker cue in a clasped carrying case into a pool hall on my morning walk and then immediately write about it, what is the point of being a writer? Imagine only writing about finance or technology or celebrity gossip because that’s your ‘niche’ and your ‘brand’. It couldn’t be me.
So like I say, I saw this character on my morning walk and I knew that baize craft and the culture around it would have to be an essay topic. So let’s get into it.
I think it was Evander Holyfield who said something like, boxing- given its violent, incredibly high stakes, war-like nature- was the only true sport and that everything else was merely a game. Something like that. Well, whether that’s true or not, I think it’s undeniable that snooker, like pool and billiards, is undoubtedly a game. Not only does it not call for athleticism (you only need to be unfat enough so that your beer gut isn’t actively getting in the way as you bend over the table to cue), but it is an activity that you demonstrably become better at after you have had a drink or two.
This is a scientific fact. I read a study once (I think I got sidetracked while trying to do some actual studying during the tail end of my undergrad degree but I could be misremembering) that stated that performance is best in target sports (snooker, bowling, darts etc) when the participant has reached their Optimal Altered State (OAS). This feels like a rule for life worth considering and if sports are a place where we extract life lessons and metaphors, I feel that this one is just as useful as the ubiquitous- ‘hustle’, ‘outwork everyone else’, ‘second place is first loser’ mantras- and so forth.
How much better would life be if OAS was the metric rather than ROI or whatever KPI1 it is that people choose to measure their personal worth against?
And in case you think I am advocating absolute decadence and degeneracy a person’s OAS is almost always achieved by imbibing only one or two drinks (depending on body weight and constitution and so forth) and falls off a cliff after much more than that, a fact which is backed up by the state of my own long potting form when I am more than two or three rounds into the evening. When it comes to the accuracy of cueing (or indeed firing an arrow at a target, say) it seems that only a small amount of alcohol is needed to steady the hand to its optimum state.
But there are some who would quibble about these quantities, because snooker- like all target games- has had its share of legendary drinkers over the decades, especially in the times before sobriety, professionalism and family friendly corporate sponsorship took over the entirety of the sports landscape. I have vague memories of seeing snooker on TV as a kid and it being entirely unremarked upon that the players would sip pints of beer between frames rather than water or- Lord help us- glucose and electrolyte filled luminous sports drinks2. And I also heard tell of folk legends of the sport, such as the Canadian player Bill Werbeniuk- who the snooker great Jimmy ‘The Whirlwind’ White3 noted- was ‘a great drinker but also a very good player.’
The stats have it that Big Bill would drink at least4 six pints before a match and then one match for each frame. Note that tightly contested latter stages tournament matches can regularly reach double figures. In fact, the story goes that our man from Manitoba was advised by doctors to drink to counteract an essential tremor that would otherwise hamper his play. Never has a man followed doctor's orders with such gusto.
Bill maintained that the rivers of booze were performance enabling rather than performance enhancing. But the sheer amount of alcohol he was reputed to drink during certain matches- 76 cans of lager in a game against John Spencer in the ‘70s and 28 pints of lager and 16 whiskeys throughout an 11 frame match against Nigel Bond in 1990 plus a full bottle of whiskey to drown his sorrows at losing the game- was staggering. And perhaps it is no surprise that Big Bill died at the age of 56.
And then we have perhaps the two only true geniuses of the game, the late Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and the current world number one Ronnie ‘The Rocket’ O’Sullivan, who both liked a drop, to say the least. Higgins died aged 61 from throat cancer brought about by his chain-smoking, heavy boozing lifestyle whereas O’Sullivan is today sober, cocaine-free and also reputedly runs regularly and minds his diet. I guess snooker is not immune to the way the wind is blowing when it comes to sports in general. I’m not passing judgement either way, just saying that things have a way of changing all of a sudden when financial incentives align and cultural moods shift.
What’s the message behind all of this? Well, I’m not sure there is one. But by way of conclusion I will leave you with this observation. When I worked in a care community for those with mental health issues, I remember that the only house that had a pool table was the easiest to work in. A few frames would settle nerves, dissipate tension, kill time when means of killing time were often much needed, provide a rule-bound and clear way to settle (or at least distract from) conflict and give the staff and residents ample opportunity to have fun and banter together. Even television coverage of the snooker could be a Godsend. I know to many that watching live coverage from The Crucible on the BBC is duller even than televised golf, but from my professional experience I can say that watching a player caress a slow red into a side pocket to the whispered commentary of John Virgo is second only to David Attenborough documentaries in its ability to make the schizophrenic and distressed visibly relax. Between that and the fact that so many games in snooker halls and pubs and community centres seem to be played between professional carers and their clients I can say that the game is a remarkable positive to the state of this country’s mental health in these particularly maddening times.
So perhaps the moral here is that we should treat life more like a game, and less like a sport.
Until next time,
Live well
Tom.
KPI= Key Performance Indicator, a piece of business jargon that really sucks the joy out of you. There’s no room for nuance, individuality, creativity or intuition when the KPIs are at stake. See also my early pieces on the tyranny of numbers and tick box.
In an amusing Dick Dastardly fashion I’ve heard it said that Premiership football players often have more performance enhancing things than mere electrolytes in their intra-game drinks bottles. But maybe this is merely a rumour...
The nicknames of the players is certainly part of the allure of snooker in my mind. Half of these guys sounds like bank robbers or outlaws and the kind of people folk musicians used to write ballads about.
At least!
The way you wrapped this up was so incredibly interesting to me regarding the connection between snooker and people with mental illness - can totally se how this would be effective. I worked in an office with a pool table years ago and having meetings over a game of pool with engineers and developers was always way more productive and way less contentious than around-the-table meetings.
As Bevan as one expects - you made the shot.