Barry's World

Behrman went from a big house to The Big House for 160 days in 2003-2004.

He was born and raised here in Norfolk, with a fraternal twin sister named Sharon. His dad worked for the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. "He rose from a pipefitter, making 43 cents an hour, to the top of the line as a quality insurance engineer," says Behrman. "He was a strict, to-the-point type of guy, and the smartest man I ever met." His parents married on Valentine's Day and stayed together for 50 years, until his mom died, at 72, in July 1987. "It was true love. I never once heard them argue. In fact, every 14th of the month for 50 years, my father would buy my mother either a box of candy or flowers. That's why I hand out a rose to every woman that comes through the door at the Open."

He went to military school for three years and was a wrestler in his senior year of high school. "Wrestling teaches you a lot about drive and grinding it out," he says. "Plus, being a little guy, I had to prove myself. I had to show what I lacked in size I made up for in spunk."

After graduating from high school in 1965, he went to work - as an apprentice printer - rather than going to college. He also began playing pool every day and ultimately fashioned himself as something of a hustler. "I played day and night for seven years," he says. "I absolutely fell in love with the game, especially straight pool. That was my game." He claims a high run of 84 balls, and was once quoted as saying, "I've played pool for a lot of cash in my life."

In 1971, he took $3,000 and invested it in his first poolhall. The place was called Paddle & Cue, and had seven pool tables and two table-tennis tables. He eventually scrapped the table-tennis and added three more pool tables. "He was virtually a one-man show during those early struggling days," says Behrman's longtime friend Rod Lowman, a defense contractor. "He'd get there at 10 every morning, worked the grill making the hot dogs and French fries and hamburgers, and spent every free moment matching players up. That's how he survived. That's how he made it work. I think he's still in that survival mode. He never seems to be comfortable with where he is." In 1975, he moved across the street and opened his first Q-Master Billiards, and a year later, cramming a couple hundred people into the back room there, put on his first Open: 16 players shooting for a $10,000 purse, which Mike Sigel ultimately won. "I came up with the idea after going to four straight U.S. Open 14.1 Championships in the '70s. In those days, if you won the 14.1 Open, you were the man. So it didn't make sense to me that they didn't have the same type of event for 9-ball players. So one day, I called Conrad Burkman [the publisher of the Billiard News], who was my only contact in the industry, and I said, 'Hey, Conrad, is anybody having a U.S. Open 9-Ball Championships? He said no. I said, 'Well, put me down. I'm going to have one. I'll call you with the dates later." And for a quarter-century, the thing ran strong. "That's because Barry always made sure people knew about the event, always tried to get TV for it, and always listened to the players' ideas," says Allen Hopkins, who won the Open twice, in 1977 and 1981. "It became a big deal to the players to win it. And you always got your money. Always. And another great thing Barry does is give free entry to all the guys who have won. Nobody else does that."

In 1976, the same year that he founded the U.S. Open, Behrman met an 18-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed waitress at a local steakhouse named Faith. Behrman - 31 at the time - soon convinced her to work for him. They married a year later. They divorced in 1981, but by then already had two children - Brady, now 27, who has two daughters, and Shannon, 24, with twin boys. Both Brady and Shannon would help staff the U.S. Open over the years, though Brady was the more active of the two, rising to the position of general manager for the event.

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