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HEY,
JOE
Filipino sharks aim to
conquer Wales
By Ted Lerner
MANILA -
No matter where you go you can't miss the fervor. In
canteens, and small shops and every bar, televisions are
tuned in hour after hour to the practically non-stop
coverage. Casual conversations often begin with a
question inquiring whether you've seen the latest match
or, more likely, "Did you see Efren last night?" People
are complaining of lack of sleep because they were up
all night watching.
Filipinos are generally
blase about sports. Sure, they love their boxing, and
they've always been curiously crazy about basketball.
But boxing champions are few these days and are always
from the less exciting smaller weights. And Filipinos
know they will never be world-class in basketball - too
small.
But mention the sport of pool or
billiards and you've tapped into something much deeper
in the Filipino soul, something that is a part of the
very fabric of this society. That's why as the World
Pool Championship finishes in Cardiff, Wales (it began
last Saturday and ends this Sunday), Filipinos of all
persuasions will be able to tell everything you need to
know about a kick shot, the break, a billiard shot and a
safety shot. They're also expecting the great Efren
Reyes to win like he did back in 1999. Or Francisco
Bustamante to finally pull through. Or one of the other
Filipino superstars to do something. If a Filipino
emerges victorious, expect a ticker-tape parade in
Manila.
They're following the tournament over
Rupert Murdoch's Star and ESPN, which is broadcasting to
the Philippines and all over Asia this week for eight
straight days with more than 30 hours of live television
coverage and more than double that of total coverage.
It's an incredible feat for a game that in its country
of origin, the United States, has become a forgotten
sport in terms of television and newspaper coverage.
In Asia, though, it's a completely different
story. Fueled by worldwide success of Filipino,
Taiwanese and Japanese players, pool has literally taken
off in the Far East. The sport is starting to gain in
popularity in India, Iran, Singapore and even Vietnam.
Professional pool is a daily staple on Star and ESPN,
with matches being beamed nearly every night into 53
million homes around the region. Pool sometimes is
featured as the lead story on the Chinese-language
sportscasts over Star, which the Taiwanese obviously
find more interesting than soccer and cricket. This year
Star Sports put together a first-ever Asian Nine-Ball
Tour, a five-city event that had to be cut down to two
stops because of the outbreak of severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Some of the
big-money tournaments now regularly take place in Japan,
Taiwan and the Philippines. European and American
players, used to playing in anonymity in their
countries, jump at any chance to play in Asia,
especially the Philippines and Taiwan, as they are
treated like celebrities wherever they go.
Manila is quickly and thoroughly establishing
itself as the mecca of pool throughout the world. There
are perhaps more good pool players per capita in the
Philippines than in all other countries in the world
combined. At this week's World Nine-Ball Championships
in Wales, 8 percent of the 128-man field consisted of
Filipinos. Eight out of nine Filipino players made it
through to the 64-man knockout stage, making theirs the
most represented country in the tournament. The top
betting favorites according to the British odds makers
are Reyes and his superb protege Bustamante. The other
Filipino players still remaining in the tournament are
less known. But known or unknown, anyone coming up
against a Filipino player knows he has to play his
utmost best to win. That's because Filipinos have set
the standard in the world of pool.
How a Third
World country like the Philippines became a pool
phenomenon is often a mystery to outsiders. But a quick
look at the history of the sport in the Philippines
provides a fascinating insight.
Like so much in
this archipelago, the game of pool was introduced to the
Philippines by the American colonizers. It was mostly a
game played by US military personnel as recreation. This
is why it's no surprise that the sport flourished in
honky tonk R&R (rest and recreation) towns such as
Olongapo and Angeles. In fact Efren Reyes, the man
considered by many here and abroad to be the greatest
ever to pick up a pool cue, hails from Angeles City.
Of all sports, pool seems the ideal fit for
Filipinos. And they took to the game naturally, as the
very nature of the sport fits their temperament and
tastes perfectly; the sport is laid-back, can be played
anywhere - including the most overcrowded slums - and,
most important, is ideal for gambling. One doesn't have
to travel very far in the Philippines to see just how
popular the game is among the populace. All over the
country, in crowded cities and far-off provinces,
legions of men young and old, many jobless and with
nothing better to do all day, crowd around canteens,
makeshift pool halls, street corners and back alleys
playing some form of billiards. It could be a regular
pool table with colorful balls, miniature tables or a
simple wooden table with flat wooden disks that slide
around. People do whatever it takes to get a game going.
Many start playing at five, six years old, and
with the energy of youth and limited options awaiting,
spend every waking hour on the tables, day after day
without letup. Filipinos have developed a stamina for
the game that is unequaled elsewhere. The many years and
the endless hours on the table have also led Filipinos
to acquire an utterly thorough knowledge of the pattern
play and angles that rivals can only envy.
On
top of all this, however, comes the No 1 reason
Filipinos are so ferocious at pool: gambling. Of course
anywhere in the world, gambling and pool go together
like a lock and key. In the Philippines, though, the
gambling takes on a completely different dimension. The
game and the gambling are not just pastimes for the
players. In the Philippines gambling is literally their
life.
"For Filipino pool players, it is our
daily bread and butter," said Bert Aleonar, a lower-rank
professional who competes in Manila. "If we don't win,
we don't eat."
"If I win I go to the market,"
said Boy Ducanes, a 47-year-old pro who supports a wife
and one child with his earnings from pool matches in
Manila. "If I lose, I have nothing."
This is not
the same for the Americans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese
and the Europeans. For them gambling adds spice to the
games, but it is rarely a matter of daily survival. This
is exactly the reason that makes Filipinos so feared on
the green felt and why pool has become the perfect
manifestation of the Filipino personality. Outsiders
often notice how laid back Filipinos seem to be in the
face of never-ending disaster and drama. They live on
the edge, yet they always seem relaxed. That's life for
a pool player. Playing for money, money that goes to
feed their families, has hardened the nerves of Filipino
players. Little fazes them and, thus, they are the best
pressure players in the world. Sure, professional
nine-ball is a wide-open game and Filipinos don't win
every single tournament. But pool players the world over
are one in agreement: when it comes to playing money
games, Filipino players are practically unbeatable.
"They don't practice," Efren Reyes once told me
when I asked him why Filipinos were so good under
pressure. "Their practice is gambling. A lot of pool
players don't have jobs. Their job is playing pool."
Indeed, there is a veritable economy unto itself
that revolves around pool in the Philippines and the
associated gambling. At every pool hall, canteen and
street corner someone has to rack the balls, another
keeps score. These people get a small percentage of the
winnings. Naturally every game has money bet on it,
including individual side bets from small and big-time
gamblers standing on the sidelines. There is never a
game that doesn't have "action".
The low-key,
likable Reyes, 48, epitomizes this spirit. He has been
making pool his job for more than four decades and has
become a living legend in the sport worldwide. His
story, his phenomenal worldwide success and his
continued humble ways have made him a true man of the
masses, a veritable folk hero in the Philippines. His
accomplishments are credited with taking pool from dingy
back alleys into the mainstream malls and cafes.
At six years old, Reyes, who was born dirt poor,
was sent by his parents to stay with his uncle, who just
happened to own the Lucky 13 billiard hall in Manila.
Too young to play, Efren was given the job of
ball-racker for the money matches between many of the
big time players and movie stars who regularly played at
The Lucky 13. At night he used the pool table as his
bed. Early in the morning he would sneak in games, using
a case of Coke to prop himself up in order to see the
table.
He dropped out of school in the sixth
grade and by his early teens, Reyes already knew
billiards inside and out. By his mid-teens he was
playing money games all over Luzon. One of his regular
haunts was Angeles City, home of the US Air Force at
Clark. Reyes regularly took lots of money from
unsuspecting GIs, who quickly learned to stop wagering
with this cue genius.
By his early 20s he was
considered the best player in the Philippines, having
mastered every possible billiard game: 15-ball rotation,
three-cushion billiards, one-pocket, straight pool and,
of course, nine-ball, the game that would eventually
become the most popular of them all. Then in 1985 Reyes
made his first trip to the United States in classic
hustler fashion. By this time word of this great
Filipino had spread overseas. Everybody knew the name,
but nobody knew the face. So he entered the Houston Open
nine-ball tournament at Red's Pool Hall in Houston,
Texas, under the name of his friend, Cesar Morales.
"Morales" mowed down the field and won the tournament,
taking not only the prize money, but thousands in side
bets for him and his fellow Filipino friends to divvy
up. Only afterward, when he mistakenly signed an
autograph for a little girl using his real name of
"Efren Reyes", was his identity unmasked. Fortunately
everybody had a good laugh.
After going through
various promoters, most of whom took advantage of him,
Reyes eventually hooked up with brothers Jose and
Aristeo Puyat, owners of the largest chain of bowling
and billiard halls in the Philippines. It was the Puyat
brothers who took Reyes, and eventually a slew of other
Filipino players, under their wing, financing trips
overseas to major tournaments, making sure they were
looked after no matter where they traveled. With proper
backing, Reyes has gone on to win everything there is to
win in the sport of billiards, including the 1999 World
Championship in Wales, a win that made him one of the
Philippines' most popular sportsmen of all time. Last
week he was inducted into the Billiards Hall of Fame in
Las Vegas.
The Puyats have also regularly
promoted major international professional nine-ball
tournaments in the Philippines and the sport continues
to flourish, drawing huge crowds and television ratings
for events big and small. Since Reyes' world title in
1999, the sport has shed its low-class image and become
a legitimate pastime for even the children of
middle-class and rich families. The top foreign
professionals who play here often marvel at how popular
pool is in the Philippines. In their own countries pool
players exist in anonymity. In the Philippines pool
players are treated like celebrities.
Up until
just a few years ago, the success of Filipino players in
pool was done without any government help. But seeing
the incredible strides made by the players through sheer
force of will, the Philippine Sports Commission
recently, albeit belatedly, got into the act. It now
offers a monthly stipend to several players and paid for
the hotel and travel expenses to the World Championships
of many of the players who aren't supported by the
Puyats.
There are legions more out there biding
their time in pool halls big and small throughout the
country, waiting for their chance to show their wares on
the world stage. There's talk now of a first-ever
professional league being formed in the Philippines,
similar to the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA),
which has been a mainstay for years. It's possible too
that a future World Pool Championship might be held in
Manila.
In a country teeming with talent in the
sport of pool, and where fans can't seem to get enough,
Manila has secured its status as the world's pool
capital.
Ted Lerner is the author of
the newly released book of Asian travel tales, The
Traveler and the Gate Checkers, as well as Hey,
Joe - A Slice of the City, an American in Manila.
E-mail ted@hey-joe.net or
visit www.hey-joe.net.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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