Player: Barry Hearn
Event: U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship
Location: Atlantic City, N.J. Date: August 19, 2024



Plenty of pool players have put their money where their mouth is. But for Barry Hearn, president of Matchroom Sport, his debut at last year's U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship was more a case of putting his cue where his money already was.

OK, the analogy might not work all too cleanly, but Hearn's professional pool debut at the age of 76 was the result of some chitchat at the 2023 Mosconi Cup, where he agreed with Sky Sports commentator Andy Goldstein to compete in Atlantic City.

A man of his word, the Guvnor chalked it up against Poland's star Konrad Juszczyszyn. Keeping his ambitions realistic, Hearn's goal was to simply win a rack in the double-elimination opening stage of the 232-player competition –something that didn't look all that likely as Juszczyszyn ran out to a 4-0 lead in the race-to-9.

But the pool gods gave Hearn a ray of hope in the fifth rack. He came to the table with a tricky but straightforward 2-9 combination. With the cue ball 6.5 diamonds away from the object ball, Hearn had an angle, though the 8 ball provided a bit of a distraction with its proximity to the cue ball.

Undaunted by the task at hand, Hearn circled the table, ensuring his view of the necessary contact on the 2 would send it toward the game ball in the bottom right.

With a short, punchy stroke, he rolled the cue ball perfectly into the 2, which clipped the top side of the 9, sending it into the corner for the win.

Mission accomplished for Hearn, he tried his best to nab a second rack, but fell in this set, 9-1, before losing his following match, 8-0, to Canada's Barry Hetherington.

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