Resiliency
David Sapolis

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's
whether or not you get up"-
Vince Lombardi

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We've all been through this. I've just coasted through my first couple of matches, handling my opponents with relative ease. I have now graduated to the next round where I am playing the hottest player in the tournament. I do my best to remain calm between matches. I relax for a bit, then I practice for a few, then it' s time to get to the match. When I get there, I see he's already one step ahead of me, clearing the balls off the table and adjusting to the table speed and the pockets. He acts as if he hasn't seen me yet, concentrating only at his current task. I look at at my watch and notice that it's exactly fifteen minutes before our match time. He cordially extends his hand and offers the table to me. I put my cue together and attempt to look as comfortable as possible as he stares and analyzes my every move. My hands start to sweat, and I start to get that puckered up feeling - you know where. It's now time for the lag, and his ball is glued to the cushion as my ball stops emarrassingly at mid-table. I walk backwards to my chair exhaling in disgust as I plop my ass down and watch. He breaks. Three balls rocket into the pockets. My head rocks backwards and I start to count ceiling tiles. When I look back to the table and he's shooting the nine into the side pocket. Ker-plop. I rack the balls for the next game, complimenting him on his last run. He gives me that Helen Keller treatment, neither seeing or hearing me. Yeah, he's good. He's lucky too. I figure that he can't keep this up forever. He has to miss sooner or later. He blasts the balls again, this time sinking two balls. The nine sits and inch out of the corner pocket with the one ball right in front of it. Snap! Ker-plop. I can feel the perspiration building around my forehead and the back of my neck. I rack again. CRACK!!! I watch helplessly as he dissects another rack of balls. Then another. Before I know it, he's got six, and I'm still trapped in Doughnutland. With the exception of the lag, I haven't shot yet. I'm getting real good at racking the balls for this guy, but that's not why I came here. A small crowd has now gathered around to watch this guy operate. There's an old man sitting in one of the seats. He keeps shaking his head in disbelief. I make eye contact with the old man and he smiles at me. I feel as though I'm going to be sick. He breaks again, and nothing falls. "There is a God!" I say to myself as I try not to trip out of my chair in anticipation. I'm faced with a seven foot shot on the one ball in the far left corner. Ray Charles couldn't screw this one up. This is an easy out. I'm finally going to get a chance to give this guy a taste of his own medicine. I'll show him that he's not here shooting by himself. We just might find out if he remembers how to rack the balls all by himself. Like a man on a mission, I carefully line up the shot, planning my position to the two ball. I take several practice strokes, then the tip makes contact with the cue ball. KLINK!!!! "Oh shit!!! I forgot to chalk my cue and miscued! This guy wastes no time sweeping the table clean. As he sinks the nine ball, I can hear some mumbling coming from the crowd of onlookers. I now try to tell myself that this isn't as bad as it looks. I can win some games too. All he has to do is miss once. All I need is chance. This guy is like machine. He runs three more racks. I start to feel the blood rushing from my head to my toes. He banks the seven just to show off in front of the railbirds. Helplessness now turns to anger as he gets closer to the hill. I start to cuss the chalk, the tip, the cue ball and my cue. I curse the day I ever decided to play pool. The last rack seems to last an eternity as my opponent gets closer to the inevitable. He examines every shot carefully on the last few balls. It's like he's torturing me. He beats me 11-0. He extends his hand to me and says, "Good match." Yeah right. He's probably going to piss his pants laughing at me every time he sees me from now on. Everybody's gonna know about it. Some hop in the ass will probably even post something about it on RSB. My reputation as a player is forever soiled. What do I do?

This has happened to me several times. Everybody gets their chance at having their butt spanked every so often. For every time I've been on this end, there have been several times that I have been on the other end. Read the above scenerio again and see how my mood transformed from after my first couple of matches, to before my match, to encountering my opponent, to sitting through the match. You will see how my anxiety level went from zero to a million over the span of an hour. Did I really do anything wrong? Well, I didn't lag for shit, and during my only opportunity at the table, I miscued. I dropped the ball. All he did was play perfect 9 ball, taking advantage of all of his opportunities. He put on a clinic. But then stands the question :

What do we do when we are so far down that it looks nearly impossible for us to come back?

This is what separates the champions from the also-rans. The champion knows that he always has a chance to win. The match wasn't over until he had 11 and I had someting less than that. I believe that during this match (against Ismael Paez circa 1988) I gave the match up when I lost the lag. He hadn't even broke the first rack of balls and I was declaring myself a loser. Why? Because I let a player's reputation haunt me before a match. Players reputations cannot beat us. They can intimidate us, distract us, and cause us to focus on that instead of putting the balls into the pockets. Mike Massey once told me that the balls will roll into the pocket the same way whether I'm playing Joe Blow or Mike Sigel. The table doesn't care who I'm playing against. Just play the table.

What is resilience?

Being resilient means being capable of recoiling from pressure or shock unchanged. It means you can bounce back no matter what the pressure is, or what the odds are against you failing. One year at the US Open I was down 12-3, then something kicked in. I ran a few racks and I started to feel good. Running three racks had rekindled my flame of confidence. When I was out of position, I played near perfect safeties. As my flame of confidence grew stronger, my opponents will to survive got weaker. All he need was one more 9 ball, and it was over. I crept closer and closer, running a few, sticking him when I could, and remaining confident that I could win the match. When I sank match ball, I was unaware that I had won the match. My opponent shook my hand and told me that I had just performed one of the greatest comebacks he had ever seen. I lost my next two matches, but they were both battles. I learned how to kick and scratch to stay alive during that tournament. I also discovered that to learn sometimes, you have to lose. It's all part of winning. Learning to win is not half as hard as learning not to lose. We have to have a strong will to survive. If someone is going to beat me during a tournament, they damn well better do it, because i ain't coming along peacefully. If I get knocked down, I get up fighting. This "never say die" attitude cannot be taught. You're either born with it, or you're not. If you play competitive pool, or if you have any competitive spirit whatsoever, you have this attitude - and it can be developed into something stronger.

Your confidence can be looked up as a flame. It's fuel is your attitude. The right attitude gets the right results. The wrong attitude gets the wrong results. When we fuel our attitude with positive thoughts, we get positive results. Look at what you are fueling your confidence with. The flame can blaze, or the spark may flicker. Where are you on that measuring scale?

The great chess champion Bobby Fischer once said, "It's not the point at which I win the match that satisfies me, it's the point in the match where I've taken away my opponent's will to survive. That's what I love!" We need to learn to recognize this point in our opponents. We should never quit !!! Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit!!!!

Blackjack
David Sapolis

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