Pool Makes A Break For The Big-Time Women Lead Wave Of Converts To Sport That Seeks More, Better TV Coverage

Inside Chalkers, a poolroom of uncommon elegance, short, wiry Nick Varner is sinking balls with ringing clicks and an ease that the nearly 50 million other Americans who play the game can only dream about.

In practice one day, Varner sank more than 1,100 balls with only three misses along the way.

“You reach that stage sometimes where every shot looks easy,” Varner, the 1994 Pro Billiards Tour player of the year, said with a Kentucky drawl. “It just seems like it’s so simple. It’s not a struggle. You’re not guessing. You feel like you can make every ball. To play the game at that high a level is an awful strong high.”

Pool, itself, is on a strong high, the fastest growing sport in America and one that is poised for a breakthrough at the professional level that could put it on a par with golf as a game for spectators.

After a rancorous split recently from ESPN, the Pro Billiards Tour announced Thursday it is setting up a nationally syndicated network of independent TV stations and talking with CBS about regular coverage.

At Chalkers, site of a 9-ball tournament starting Friday, tour commissioner Don Mackey outlined his plans for a sport that has grown from 40 million players in 1993 and has more than 11 million frequent players - up from six million two years ago, according to the Billiard & Bowling Institute of America.

Armed with those figures, and demographics showing that teenagers, baby boomers and women of all ages are rapidly taking up the sport, Mackey is pushing pool on TV, with the NCAA, and with the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“The thing that is really revolutionizing the game is that more and more women are coming into it,” Mackey said. “They’re changing the entire environment in which the game exists. Instead of that old smoke-filled, back room gambling thing, there is a more relaxing social situation.”

From Pasadena to Palo Alto, Calif., from Boca Raton, Fla., to East Lansing, Mich., pool has moved far beyond the images of “The Hustler,” “The Color of Money,” and characters like Luther “Wimpy” Lassiter and Minnesota Fats shooting for fast bucks in dark, dingy parlors. Modern poolrooms are well-lighted and clean, and tournaments are staged in convention centers, casinos, fancy hotels and poolrooms like Chalkers.

And, increasingly, the game of choice among better players is no longer 8-ball or straight pool but 9-ball, a brisk game that is also better suited for the pros on television.

“Eight-ball is really the basic American game that’s been the most popular,” Mackey said. “But over the past 20 years, 9-ball has made a tremendous surge with serious players. Nine-ball starts out with the big break, and if you make the 9-ball on the break you win. That adds a certain excitement. It’s quick and it’s easy and requires less decisionmaking than 8-ball. There’s less defense, more offense.”

The Pro Billiards Tour, which moved around like a nomad on ESPN’s schedule but still attracted a faithful audience comparable to hockey, features the world’s best players: Varner, Earl Strickland, Johnny Archer, Mike Massey, Kim Davenport and others.

But the tour is still in its infancy, with only about $1.1 million in prize money for 14 tournaments this year.”If you’re not in the top 24, you’re starving,” Mackey said, noting that about 75 pros are on the tour.

In order to grow, the players decided to gamble that they could do without ESPN.

“The way we were presented was in these one-hour taped formats,” Mackey said. “Imagine taking a nine-inning baseball game and condensing it into 46 minutes of air time. Something’s got to get chopped. The audience got frustrated. Pool players want to see the whole thing, just like baseball fans want to see the whole game.”