AT JUST about 10:30 p.m. this past Friday, Johan Ruijsink, the Dutch national pool coach and coach of the European Mosconi Cup team was walking up and down the concourse of the Araneta Coliseum looking for Roberto Gomez. It was about an hour before the start of Gomez’ round of 16 match against Ruijsink’s player Niels Feijen, which was to take place on the main TV table.

Why, you may ask, would the coach of Feijen want to speak with Gomez? Well, Ruijsinnk had a plan. He was sick of the soft break, which everyone, especially Gomez, was using with major success on table one. He felt it was making the game way too predictable, repetitive and terminally boring.

“This kind of pool is no good,” Ruijsink said. “It’s not good for the game. If this was the way the game was played when I first discovered pool, I would have never taken up the sport. I would have played chess instead. It’s boring.”

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IT seems everyone backstage at the World Pool Championship has a personal story to tell about the great Earl Strickland and his bizarre rants and raves. Earl’s always looking for a sympathetic ear in order to unload a litany of complaints about the world in general. If you’re a player, a guest, or working the event, it’s only a matter of time before you will stumble upon Earl and receive an earful about his sorry life, how he can’t win this tournament, he’s past his prime, the table conditions suck, the Taiwanese are hogging the practice tables, etc. Sometimes it’s Earl who corners people into listening. Most times, though, I believe it’s people who seek out Earl. We humans are easily entertained and the sights and sounds of a grown man in the stages of psychological meltdown seem to be especially appealing.

I always make sure to say hello to Earl when I see him at a tournament because, well, I actually like Earl. I’ve talked privately with him on many occasions and found him to be a nice guy. It’s obvious he’s troubled about the world so, in my feel sorry mode, I lend him an ear. Though I’m not sure if he really cares about me. I sense he simply wants to vent and rant on anyone within earshot and doesn’t care who’s standing in front of him. And truth be told, his tirades can be fun to listen to. For a few moments, anyway.

My encounter with Earl happened on day one just inside the south gate to the Araneta as players, guests, media and officials were waiting in a reasonably short security line.

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SOME players call it getting in “dead stroke.” Others call it “free flowing mode.” Yet others call it being “in the zone.” Whatever the moniker, it is the Holy Grail of playing for pool players. It’s that space where everything seems to come together at once, and you play perfect pool, no longer thinking about the mechanics of your stroke, no longer fretting about previously missed balls, no longer thinking of what lies ahead in a match. You have stopped caring and are just playing, living in the moment, unfettered by outside distractions or worries. Everything is so darn easy; the stroke just flows, the balls drop dead center, the cue ball goes exactly where you want it.

But, of course, the conundrum of it all is that that bit of Buddhist Zen is damn near impossible to achieve. And not just in pool. Why is it in life that whenever you start caring too much about something you’re trying to accomplish, you often have trouble getting anywhere? But the minute you give up and stop caring, things start to flow and your performance is enhanced? I often find that is just the case with writing.

The sport of pool, though, seems to offer exceptionally challenging odds, especially at the professional level. Played alone with nobody to pass the shot over to, the pressure-packed decisions players have to make, along with the fickle nature of the balls, all add a cruelty to the game that leads me to believe that many players suffer silently as they search for that ever elusive magic. No doubt, it is also the reason why fans love the sport. When you do see a player in free flow mode, you sit back and say, “Wow!” For players who achieve that nirvana, it must feel like total ecstasy.

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IT’S all about the grind, and who has the stamina, the will, and yes, it being professional 9-ball, the luck on their side to prevail. It’s a brutally difficult combination of factors to pull together, and it tests the inner and outer makeup of even the most seasoned professionals out there. Well, this is for the World Pool Championship, so why would you have it any other way?

The overriding emotions that keep coursing through my veins here at the World Pool Championship qualifiers in Manila are awe and respect. Simply put, these qualifiers are just plain difficult. You’ve got around 160 players from over 50 countries on hand vying for just 10 spots in the main tournament. 80 players start the day in the morning tournament, and about the same in the afternoon. Realistically only about 25 players in each session have a reasonable chance of getting through. But still, that in itself presents some very long, difficult odds. This event speaks volumes about how much top pool talent is out there in all corners of the globe, talent that you don’t always hear about.

On top of the deep talent pool, the event itself is a complete grind. The matches are race to 7, alternate break, single elimination. For a player to get through to the WPC, he has to win seven matches in one session. This means you can play lights out the whole day, then get to the final match, get a few unlucky breaks, and you’re gone. And this is a day that can last up to 14 hours. And then you have to come back the next day, summon up the same energy and mental clarity, and try all over again. It is a total slog through the mud, a brutal competition that requires not only tremendous skill and stamina, but a fair amount of luck and fortune as well.

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ANGELES CITY, Pampanga, Philippines–Last year’s World Pool Championship final in Manila featured two players, Ralf Souquet and Ronnie Alcano, who, on the surface, appeared to have little in common. In fact they and their respective countries, Germany and the Philippines, would appear to be polar opposites in just about everything. Except for one caveat that went largely unnoticed, however; both countries were introduced to the sport of pool through the longtime presence of the American military in their respective nations. Indeed that’s what was so fascinating about last year’s final in Manila. Two great “American” pool playing countries doing battle for the world title.

It’s what happens when you have your military camped around the world. Your culture — the good, the bad and the ugly — goes with you. Imagine if peace miraculously ever does come to Iraq, 30 to 40 years from now you’ll probably see Iraqi pool players making big strides in the sport. Pool is one of the few American imports the fun-killing fundamentalists over there could probably tolerate. Chains of Hooters restaurants in Baghdad obviously won’t cut it.

In Germany most people could easily trace America’s version of pool back to 1945 and the end of World War II, when, after crushing the Germans, the Americans took up a prolonged residency. For the Philippines the beginnings are not so evident. Pool fans who have never been to the Philippines often wonder how it is that the sport became so vastly popular in this tropical Asian archipelago. Well, check your history folks. 99 out of 100 Americans probably have no clue that the Philippines was once an American colony.

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IT was the stuff of wild and surreal dreams of every professional pool player. To play for their sport’s top honor in a colorful, exotic land where the game has roots stretching back over a century, and is firmly entrenched in the national psyche; where their typically anonymous careers were cast aside, and they were feted like Hollywood celebrities by a warm and hospitable people; where the high level of drama and competition brought on an atmosphere akin to what pool would look like if it were played in the Olympics.

Sure Cardiff, Wales got the job done for five years. And two years in Taiwan provided an exotic, if somewhat utilitarian, Asian flavor. But when the World Pool Championship finally made its first ever stop in the Philippines last November, the pool world had never seen anything like it. Barry Hearn, the flamboyant chairman of Matchroom Sport, and the promoter of the World Pool Championship, put it best when he said: “Having the World Pool Championship in the Philippines is like bringing the sport back to where it all began.”

Indeed. Although Filipinos didn’t invent pool, the sport has a long history in the Philippines, stretching all the way back to the 19th century and the Spanish era. Of course it was the American version of pool that caught on in this tropical archipelago, this land where America once tried to remake the populace in their red, white and blue image. Predictably, the Americans failed to turn Filipinos into Americans, but they left a taste in Filipinos for nearly all things American, including pool. As those newcomers to Manila quickly found out, the American game of pool is loved and played at all levels of Philippine society, and is firmly entrenched in the cultural fabric like no other place on earth.

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