Barry's World

Behrman, 58, is unarguably one of the greatest promoters pool has ever had, producing the game's longest-running major event, the U.S. Open 9-Ball Championships, for nearly three decades. And for most of that time, he was considered one of the players' best friends - a guy who during thin times gave them something to shoot for year after year and who paid them well and on time and who treated his past champions like kings.

It was even rumored, before things went bad, that Behrman might be on the verge of winning an industry award. And who could argue? The guy created something glorious and enduring out of dust. But those lofty rumors have long since died. Because following a wonderfully celebratory 25th anniversary in 2000, in which he added another $20,000 to the Open's usual $52,000 guaranteed purse and staged a PGA Masters-like ceremony (with all the past winners individually introduced and dressed in green blazers), Behrman's personal and professional life plummeted. To where he nearly lost everything: his poolroom business of 33 years, his precious U.S. Open, and even his freedom.

"I didn't hit rock bottom," he says, sitting in his tiny office in Q-Master Billiards one night, surrounded everywhere by U.S. Open memories - old black-and-white photos, yellowed newspaper clippings, and rows of tapes of past matches, "but I was close. I was flat broke and a week away from my business being padlocked - while I was padlocked. Most men would've folded, gone off the deep end. I didn't. Even from jail, I made financial arrangements to keep things going." Hit with a pair of horrible rolls, the unnatural disaster of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the natural disaster of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, he lost huge chunks of cash and sank deeper into debt. The money troubles began in April 2001, when for the first time in his career he put on a spectacular failure, the Masters 9-Ball Championships. That event, which came across as nothing more than an Open clone, not only cost him around $50,000 but also considerable face in the community, as he couldn't dole out prize money to a slew of players for several months. Just five months after the Masters, he became embroiled in yet another major controversy. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took place on the second day of the Open, and, due to meager ticket sales, he cut the Open's "guaranteed" prize money. He subsequently locked into a pissing match with Charlie Williams, then president of the United States Professional Pool Players Association [UPA], who continues to boycott the event. His 89-year-old father, whom he revered, then died in November 2002. And finally, he ended up in jail two separate times, for nearly eight months total, after a string of legal problems and varying unseemliness: among other things, caught hosting illegal casino nights at his $625,000 palatial bachelor's pad, failing to pay taxes on his Q-Master Billiards poolroom in Virginia Beach, and twice breaking probation when cocaine showed up in his mandatory urine tests.

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