Raj to Riches

An undeniable talent with a powerful stroke, Hundal (above) likens his game to that of Earl Strickland. (Photo by Lawrence Lustig)

The next day, on a packed Friday night at Amsterdam Billiard Club in the East Village, Hundal and I are playing 9-ball on a tight-pocket table along the right side of the room.

Actually, he's playing; I'm watching. Shooting as if without pause, he's running racks in what seems like eyeblinks.

He's in town from London visiting his close friend, Mika Immonen, who lives less than a mile from Amsterdam and happens at the moment to be sparring with someone one table away.

Right away, I'm struck by this about Hundal's game: He hits a lot of balls just short of warp speed - and with amazing accuracy, the object ball rarely touching a rail going in.

"That's why Earl [Strickland] likes my game so much," he says at one point with a big grin. "We play a lot alike. The way the game should be played. With power. We ain't afraid to hit 'em hard."

He giggles. "As Earl says, we don't play that chickens**t pool."

It leads to Hundal playing position in ways you never imagined, sometimes going three, four rails when you thought for sure he'd go one or two.

"Raj is one of the most creative players out there," Charlie Williams would tell me days later. "He likes to experiment with different ways to do things, isn't afraid to discover something new."

Hundal grew up studying videos of Strickland, Francisco Bustamante, Johnny Archer and Efren Reyes. And his stroke - very long and flowing, exhibiting not a hint of his snooker past, except for his chin placed down low on the cue - is something of an odd amalgam of all those great players.

He was the best 9-baller in the U.K. by the time he was 23 and won the World Pool Masters in 2005 (his global coming-out party and, to this day, his greatest tournament triumph). But while he has captured a ton of third places, fifths, and ninths in the U.S., he strangely has yet to snap off a major title here.

"I'm always knocking on the door," he says while taking a break between racks. "I don't know what's holding me back from winning. I guess if I go too deeply into it, I'll go crazy.

"I think I just need to carry on the learning process, keep increasing my table knowledge."

Immonen, with his match over, wanders over to our table and whispers to me as Hundal is shooting again:

"Raj's talent is very obvious. You can see it very quickly. He has a great stroke. He's very confident. He can move the cue ball like a pool player, but because of his snooker experience he also has the finesse to kill the ball. He has a lot of weapons in his repertoire and almost no weaknesses.

"But I look at him as a player who's still developing, still learning the game of 9-ball. The intricacies. The kicks and the safeties. All of which he'll eventually pick up. Because he's very observant, absorbs a lot, and listens when you tell him something.

"He wants to prove himself. He's eager to play the top players and beat them - and he has beaten them. If anything is holding him back, it's maybe that he gears up so much for the great players that he lets down for the lesser ones."

"My time will come," Hundal says finally when we're done playing. He pauses for a second before saying fairly convincingly, "Eventually, there'll be a tournament with my name on it."

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