![]() In one frame, the black ball was dead, seemingly lost in no-man’s land off to the side. “It’s more expensive than that just to be here,” he said. After winning the tournament 14 years ago, Prabhakar had since lost four finals but he kept on playing. But for the amateur to keep playing the sport out of your pocket year after year is entirely different kind of commitment. O’Sullivan cites money as one of his primary motivations for playing, and that’s understandable with $500,000 in prize money on the line in the world final. Prabhakar stalked the table with his hand in his pocket-a very stressed man trying to appear nonchalant. The lights had been turned off on the other tables a single harsh fluorescent light focused on the baize made it appear as though they were playing snooker on a pond of glowing algae. The game has a proven record of entertaining millions of people.”įung and Prabhakar began their best-of-nine match with the winner’s trophy placed off to one side next to a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee. “There’s nothing wrong with the rules of the game. “Once you start compromising the game, the natural asset is wasted,” he said. When this was put to him, Hearn was unconvinced. We’re trying to see if we can get special balls made.” “So for the pool hall owners, you don’t need to invest in the snooker tables until the players are ready. “It’s like an introduction to snooker for pool players,” he said. Part of how Prabhakar wants to popularize the game in America is to take the game of snooker and put it on a pool table. “Right now, what we need is more support from the World Snooker organization and maybe bringing a professional tournament here and trying to get it on television,” he said. Last year, they had 11 mostly regional tournaments. When he became president in 2008, there was just the national championship. “They’re going to say it’s a set-up!” he laughed. As well as a player, the affable Prabhakar is also the president of the U.S. No-one could wait for the final-which would be Prabhakar vs. For many, this would have been the most boring afternoon of their lives. One semi-final at the Brooklyn tournament took six hours to finish-and that was for just seven games of snooker. “I quickly realised Ronnie’s in a different league. “After the first frame, we broke off and he quickly cleared the table,” Prabhakar recalled. Prabhakar played in India and finished sixth in 1991 in the World Junior Championships, which was won by a certain Ronnie O’Sullivan. Once you come to the U.S., your snooker dies.” “Most of the players don’t play regularly,” said Prabhakar, “and you can tell. champion, was in tears after he was knocked out. Ahmed Aly Elsayed, the Egyptian former three-time U.S. In Brooklyn, they may have been amateurs but they took it seriously. “Some sports don’t translate to other countries and you have to accept that.” “An American audience would never understand why a semi-final takes three days,” Hearn tells Quartz. But despite strides around the rest of the world, America has yet to be persuaded of the game’s charms.įor the near future, there’s some talk of bringing O’Sullivan to play an exhibition match against China’s highest-ranked player, in Las Vegas “for the Chinese gamblers.” But Hearn says that no-one will pay him enough in TV broadcasting rights to make a U.S. The German Masters draws the largest crowds of anywhere in the world. The sport is also expanding rapidly in Europe, especially to the east. The total prize money on the circuit has more than doubled to more to almost $15 million. “It’s not rocket science.” Despite strides around the rest of the world, America has yet to be persuaded of the game’s charms. “We went to countries where the sport is growing,” Hearn said. Hearn borrowed some razzmatazz from another sport he runs, darts, playing up nicknames (“The Jester from Leicester”) and theme music, and proceeded to expand the number of tournaments from six to 30, with most of them taking place in countries such as India and China, where the sport is surging in popularity. ![]() It was a long way from the peak of the '80s.” In 1985, 18 million people in Britain watched the final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor, which went on well past midnight. ![]() “When I arrived, the sport was moribund,” Hearn tells Quartz. ![]()
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