Just Who Does Charlie Williams Think He Is?
By Mike Geffner
“I was like all the other players,” Williams
says. “I was waiting for some big sponsor, or some big leader
in the industry, to step up and do something. I kept saying to myself,
‘Where are our leaders? Why isn’t something happening?’”
Eventually, a phone call with a friend changed everything. It was
with former Camel Tour public relations woman Kirstin Pires, then
the editor of Billiards Digest. “She put the bug in my head,”
Williams says. “She told me that the men needed someone like
me, that I was intelligent and honest, and that those were exactly
the qualities the men needed to lead them. And that if I didn’t
do something, who would? My response: I thought the idea was hilarious.
I started laughing uncontrollably. I told her that she shouldn’t
be talking to me, but to veteran guys like Nick and Johnny. I told
her I was too young to be handling things like that.”
Around nine months later, Williams wasn’t laughing anymore.
“I decided that Kirstin was right and I decided to do something.
I researched the past associations, what they did right, what they
did wrong, why they failed. I talked to a bunch of veteran players,
who all gave me bits and pieces of helpful advice.”
Then one night, after playing some sets of one-pocket and having a
spaghetti-and-meat sauce dinner with friend and Orlando, Fla., neighbor
Nick Varner, Williams picked Varner’s brain about how to get
an association started. Williams furiously jotted notes on a small,
ripped-off piece of scratch paper.
His goal, he says, was to “establish men’s professional
pool as a legitimate sport, where all the players have security, make
a good living, and get notoriety for their skills and talents.”
Williams spread the UPA word to his brethren with a slew of phone
calls and e-mails. He also went to work immediately on building a
board, which he viewed as a major priority.
“I came to the conclusion that the UPA had to be set up differently
than any other past association,” he says. “This would
be especially true with the board. In the past, the board’s
been a joke, with guys voted onto it because they were popular, and
without enough business people, especially ones outside of the billiard
industry with no ulterior motives, to give it balance. I wanted the
player reps to be guys who were intelligent, well-liked, and trusted
by a majority of the players.”
He eventually arrived on a seven-member board, broken down into three
player reps and four businessmen. He recruited Max Eberle and Jeremy
Jones as player reps, and Phil Muller, the owner of a software company
as well as a friend of Varner’s, as the point man on the business
side. Williams ultimately became president. “Which happened
by my getting voted in,” he makes sure to add. “A lot
of people think I just appointed myself, but there was a vote by the
board — and I didn’t even vote for myself.” By May
2001, the UPA was up and running, and before 2002 rolled around, “we
had almost all the top players under contract.” [Currently,
the group counts more than 150 players as members in amateur and professional
standing.]
The UPA confronted its first problem — and test — only
four months into its existence, at the U.S. Open, just days after
it held its first face-to-face board meeting. When promoter Barry
Behrman announced the day after the Sept. 11 attacks that he was reducing
the $72,000 guaranteed added prize fund by almost half, Williams was
incensed. So were a lot of players. “I’m thinking, ‘He
can’t do that. That’s totally wrong,’” Williams
says now. “And this is the whole point behind having an association:
to protect ourselves.” He gathered the players together for
a private meeting, where they bounced around a bunch of questions.
“It was amazingly civilized, however,” says Williams.
Afterwards, Behrman faced the players with an explanation, telling
them that the guaranteed money was based on the gate, and since the
gate was way down because of Sept. 11, he didn’t have the money
to keep to his original agreement. For Williams, it was an eye-opening
revelation. “After all these years,” he says, “we
find out that we were taking a risk, that the guaranteed money was
never really guaranteed.”
Williams’ relationship with Behrman, who he’s known since
he was a teenage dragon growing up in Newport News, Va., has never
been the same. In fact, phone calls between the two concerning UPA
sanctioning for the 2002 Open became so contentious that Eberle was
brought in to pick up the negotiations and ease the tensions. “A
lot of yelling and screaming,” is how Williams categorizes his
conversations with Behrman, “and they usually ended with Barry
hanging up on me.” Ultimately, the UPA denied sanction and Williams
sat it out. So did UPA board members Eberle and Jones, as did sympathizer
Mika Immonen. “The UPA never officially boycotted it,”
Williams maintains. “But we couldn’t with a clear conscience
tell the players it was safe to go play.”
A majority of the players ignored Williams’ warnings and concerns
and played without so much as a hiccup in the U.S. Open that year.
“I was very disappointed in the players,” he says. “I
felt it was wrong of them to just follow the money and play, thought
it showed a lack of integrity. I also felt it sent the impression
that the players will just go their own way, that our association
isn’t very strong.”
As for the current state of the relationship between Williams and
Behrman, the Dragon says, “Barry and I have talked a few times
in the last year and we’re okay with one another.” Says
Behrman: “Charlie’s a feisty kid and I understand what
he’s trying to do for his players, and it’s admirable,
even if I don’t agree with some of it. I think he should leave
the leading of the tour to someone older and more experienced.”
(The UPA also declined to sanction the 2003 U.S. Open, set for Sept.
15-21. But, in a bow to the event’s prestige and widespread
desire among players to compete, UPA officials decided to grant waivers
to members who wished to enter.)
But promoters other than Behrman have been taken aback by the UPA’s
sanctioning demands as well. For example, Super Billiards Expo honcho
Allen Hopkins and promoter Jay Helfert have tussled with the UPA over
sanctioning requirements for their tournaments.
Williams defends the UPA’s position on sanctioning events, saying
the criteria are based on nothing less than common sense. “All
we ask of promoters are four simple and basic things: 1) that all
participants be UPA members (with occasional special exemptions);
2) that players are seeded according to UPA rankings; 3) that the
tournament is played according to UPA rules and formats, which are
pretty flexible; and 4) that the promoters sign a contract that promises
not only all of the above but that they pay out the money advertised.
And that’s it. We ask for no sanctioning fees. We don’t
want any of the gate. We’re not interested in any financial
return whatsoever. To get our sanction is ridiculously easy.”
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