HomeAbout Billiards DigestContact UsArchiveAll About PoolEquipmentOur AdvertisersLinks
Tips & shafts
By George Fels
Consulting Editor George Fels has been writing for Billiards Digest since 1980, and his "Tips & Shafts" column is usually our readers' first stop when they crack open the magazine. For better or worse, pool has been his only mistress for 40-plus years.


Archives
• October 2024
• September 2024
• August 2024
• July 2024
• June 2024
• May 2024
• April 2024
• March 2024
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• April 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• July 2022
• June 2022
• May 2022
• April 2022
• March 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• July 2021
• June 2021
• May 2021
• April 2021
• March 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• June 2020
• April 2020
• March 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• July 2019
• June 2019
• May 2019
• April 2019
• March 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• July 2018
• July 2018
• June 2018
• May 2018
• April 2018
• March 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• July 2017
• June 2017
• May 2017
• April 2017
• March 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• July 2016
• June 2016
• May 2016
• Apr 2016
• Mar 2016
• Feb 2016
• Jan 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• July 2015
• June 2015
• May 2015
• April 2015
• March 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• October 2014
• August 2014
• May 2014
• March 2014
• February 2014
• September 2013
• June 2013
• May 2013
• April 2013
• March 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• July 2012
• June 2012
• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• July 2011
• June 2011
• May 2011
• April 2011
• March 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• July 2010
• May 2010
• April 2010
• March 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008


Best of Fels
 
August: On Being Away
August 2017

By George Fels
[Reprinted from November 1983]


Like other of life’s creamiest indulgences, pool is largely a matter of “Use it or lose it.” We all know the game’s bitter fickleness even as she is being played; but that is only a whimper compared to the tantrums she will raise if you stay away for any time at all. Strangely, the only excuse accepted at all by your pool game for your abstinence seems to be, “I stayed away because I was tired of you,” and only to that extent does pool finally stop acting as most women do.

There’s an abundance of cult legends that are, or were, exceptions to that. At that game’s top plateau, Jack Colavita came back after back surgery and being told he well might never play again; and Joe Balsis had an astonishing 16-year layoff before returning to championship play. Strong top money players who brushed off two-year hiatuses and returned to stroke in no time include cue artist Bill Stroud and John Ervolino, and no doubt several others. Beyond that, there are parallel stories of good-to-very-good players who did the same thing in virtually every major American room.

Ervolino was also a member of that maddening segment of the game which turns all our eyes greener than new Simonis in envy: super players who couldn’t care less if they ever play again. I don’t know how they do that; there’s little I wouldn’t pay to drink of their elixir. In my experience, the society is densely populated with Italians, particularly when the dreaded bangtail fever co-exists as a symptom. There was Ervolino, of course, and Pancho Furio; in the Midwest, such fine Mediterranean names as Bentivegna, Guagliardo and Abruzzo proudly carry on the tradition. In the great desert to the west, the noble Incardona marches to the same drum, and the intoxicating tarantella of indifference spins on. Only in the case of the insidious Brooklyn Jimmy does my theory falter in the least, and then only because he was half-Italian. These are the gigolos of pool, who scorn her deeply as can be, yet return to enjoy her sweetest favors almost at will. Some guys get all the breaks.

But mostly the game pays you back, and sternly, for being away. Just playing missing the game hurts enough, and I think part of that has to do with your apprehension about what awaits you at her hands when you do come back. The competent shot maker who returns from layoff only to behold his cue ball engaging the wrong half of the object ball is either in intense psychological pain or giggling wildly, maybe both. You can pick out recent returnees in any room where meaningful competition exists; they’re the ones with the expressions of frozen horror, wordlessly shrieking, “What have I done?” Barring serious physical mishap, of course, the game will eventually welcome you back and probably permit you to take up where you left off. Many players claim a brief layoff actually helps. It’s the fragile correct state of mind for the game that’s the most elusive, but the first unfamiliarities are usually in the body. The balance of your stance feels like an approaching stranger; unused muscles are inexplicably stiff. For all the times you might have absently formed a perfect tripod bridge around a pen, fork or soda straw, the ultimately proper object of your affection does not feel right down there now. All your little orgies with -0000 steel wool, the caresses of tip-shaping, the loving shaft-rubs of baby powder have seemingly gone for naught. Your arms are unfeeling goalposts holding a cold, hostile crossbar. And then finally she comes back, not with a giant forgiving rush but with little quiet coquettes. You may recognize her tactile sounds first, the taps and clicks and plops that became your mantra. It may be her speeds that speak to you early, your playing cadence returning timidly as a raw recruit would march it, or the hypnotic fast-and-slow marriage of the thinnest cue shots. Or you can fall for her prettiness all over again, all colors and angles and the blush of risk. The game creeps up on you with delicious tweaks; the sense of an anvil-like bridge hand, a wrist that feels like linguine, the sensation of the cue ball contact in both your playing hands. All of this is foreplay until your head explodes into the game too and all else falls away; rather than playing the game, you become an extension of it, pumped up with otherworldly confidence and prescient, God-like notions about where all the balls are going.

The bad news, of course, is that this joyous no-worlds-left-to-conquer state can dissipated in a run of three or four balls sometimes. If you’re very lucky, it might take you to your peak, be that 10, 25 or all points beyond — but one quick look at that is probably all you are going to see, not one whit further and maybe not at all for a short while. The game knows you’ve been gone, how long, what kind of price you’ll pay. She crosses her legs expertly, showing you only what she wants you to see. They’ll lead me off one day insisting, in a wheezy and perhaps straightjacketed way, that the game has a personality of its own, that a pool table in your home or life is a living, breathing dependent that you don’t have to declare on your Form 1040.

We’re redecorating now, including carpeting, so my pool table has been down for six weeks and will be for three more. There isn’t time to play anyplace else. But I’ve maintained an excellent exterior calm, and no one has to know about my innter churnings, because I put up such an expert inscrutable front. Nobody could ever tell.

MORE VIDEO...