It is generally understood that the young billiard professional has to encounter a perfect sea of difficulties before he can hope to obtain recognition in his vocation. He has to put up with numberless disappointments and am amount of cold-shouldering, and, unless he possesses the grit and determination of an Inman or some fortuitous event happens which happily pitchforks him into public notice and makes it impossible for him to be ignored, he may, although a really talented player, go on for years eating out his heart in obscurity.
The incidents immediately contributing to the penning of those remarks have been the sudden rise into billiard fame of two quite young men, in the persons of T. Newman, of London, still only 19, and W. Smith, of Darlington, who is understood to be 25 or thereabouts. A year ago both were comparatively unknown. Newman was playing in single session matches where he could obtain engagements in what might almost be regarded as the third rank of professional billiards, and Smith was still at work on a linotype machine in a newspaper printing office. Newman has grown up to billiards from childhood, as so many other professional billiardists have done, through the channel of the hotel room; Smith has turned to the vocation from an industrial handicraft as Burns turned from the plough to poetry. But both might have remained for many years to come in comparative obscurity if something had not happened.
Exactly what did happen was this. Smith was wisely hit upon to oppose George Gray (with a liberal start conceded) in some local exhibition matches, and beat the hitherto invincible young Australian actually on points, and Newman, being selected by John Roberts to take the place of Gray, when the latter backed out of an agreement to "star" with the great player, put up a series of brilliant performances against the veteran which greatly interested and impressed the world of billiard covers. Thus each youth got his chance of a lifetime at an early stage in his billiards career and was able to render an exceedingly good account of himself.
Now Newman is to tour Canada with John Roberts in lieu of George Gray, and Smith will also find himself in first-class English billiards next season.
But what of the rest? What of the Breeds, the Tothills, the Lawrences, the Hoskinses, the Peall juniors, and the dozen or more of others, who are rarely given their chances in London before anything like a representative circle of onlookers or under auspices that really count?
It may be urged that the public will not pay to see anyone play who has not already earned a "gate" reputation, and that promoters of tournaments or exhibition matches know from long experience that to bill any other than well-known names means empty benches. But there are "publics" and "publics." There is the public that will only pay to see the best, and there is another public that will pay to see something short of the best if it is not expected to pay so much. There are two other things, however, that the public of both kinds desires to see and these are fairly long breaks and keenly-fought games.
These considerations seem to us to indicate the key to the situation. If younger and comparatively unknown players who can make 100 breaks easily and breaks of 200, 300, and upwards on occasion can be afforded a real incentive to give of their best, the result should not, we think, prow other than attractive to a considerable section of the public. All the second or third class players whom we have named have closely touched or exceeded the 200 mark, while some of them have reached 300, 400, and almost 500.
Cannot some scheme be evolved under which every young professional player in the kingdom who fancies himself and who has a good playing record may be brought forward and given his chance to distinguish himself in some such classic arena as that of Soho Square? Why not, for example, have entrance to the great professional tournament of the year competed for by all and sundry by means of preliminary selective contests? If that were done some stern and close fighting would ensue and there would be infused for the first time into professional billiards a healthful sporting element that has long been familiar, under the title of colts' matches, in professional cricket.
To the names mentioned above others might have been added of players who have already taken part in the Soho Square Tournaments, such as Lovejoy, Elphick, Mack, Cook, Harris, and Collens, while Osborne, Sparrow, and Holliwell are well known at the centre of things, as are Duncan, Falkiner, Nelson, Pearson, Pindar, Raynor, and others in the provinces. Some of these hardly come now under the denomination of the "young player," but there would seem to be no reason why each and all of them should not compete for Tournament inclusion and so "make by force their merit known."
It is an irony in the professional billiard player's career that whereas the evidence of exceptional break-making skill is required to give him his introduction to first-class play, such skill (of the all-round kind) is rarely to be achieved except by day-to-day employment in serious encounters. The good engagements cannot be obtained without the reputation and the reputation (unless something fortuitous happens or a set stroke is specialized upon) is only to be obtained as the result of the good engagements.
It consequently happens that the bright promise of youth fails to fructify; other avocations have to be partially or wholly resorted to; and the billiard world loses what might, with due encouragement at the psychological moment, have become high-class and even phenomenal expositions of the game.
It is, therefore, the encouragement of the young player that seems to be the most urgently needed, and there is reason to believe that this revised attitude towards the professional element in billiards might be so taken as to satisfy the public whilst according a certain meed of justice to the profession itself.