Through the Eyes of a Champion

By Johnny Archer

Think Before You Shoot!

My last tournament adventure was at the World Pool Masters, held about 30 miles from Amsterdam in Egmond aan Zee, the site for this year's Mosconi Cup. The Masters is a 16-player invitational event put o­n by Matchroom Sport that has an international cast. o­nly o­ne American gets invited to this prestigious event, and that made me feel good, because it was my first time being invited. It was fun, even though I o­nly got to play o­ne match. I would have liked to have played more!

I arrived o­n Friday early in the morning, but I didn't play until late Saturday afternoon, so I got in plenty of practice time. It's always a good thing when you're entering a new environment to practice as much as you can in order to get comfortable, and then you can deal with the rest of the surroundings and the pressure involved.

When I learned that my first match would be against Luc Salvas of Canada, I felt confident.  I was playing pretty well, and I've always had good matches against Luc. We had just played in the World Championships-he was ahead 6-2 and then 8-5 in the race to 9 and then made a mistake, and I ran out the last four racks to win 9-8. So I was feeling pretty good going into this match.

"Machine Gun" Luc started off o­n fire, getting every good shot, and I couldn't stop him. He was running out from everywhere, and if he didn't, he'd play a good safe. As everyone knows, he plays very fast, so the match was relatively painless.  When I did get a shot, I decided to take my time, let the people see me a little bit, and possibly try to break up his rhythm as well. Since he was at the table more, he was dictating the pace. What I wanted to do was slow down to get the match going more in my favor. You want to dictate the rhythm, because if your opponent does it, he'll feel more comfortable and play better.

In no time, Luc was up 6-2 in the short race to 8. He made an error at that point, and then I started finally getting a few chances, getting the rhythm o­n the slow pace a little more. I was able to bring the score to 6-all when I broke the balls and didn't have a shot o­n the 1 ball. I had to play safe, so I decided to bank the 1 down table but didn't really concentrate o­n getting it behind the group of balls down there. I had gotten into the rhythm and had won a few games in a row, so I was in the zone and didn't think the shot through-I just felt it. So instead of ending up safe, I left him where he could hit the right side of the 1 ball.

He clipped the right side of the ball, and the 1 hit the bottom rail and came out a little bit, and the cue ball went two rails to rest behind the 9. I had to kick at the 1 and left him a pretty easy shot.  He pocketed the 1 and went o­n to run out, making the score 7-6 with him o­n the hill. With his next break, he was able to run out for the win. The mistake I made is that I should have thought that safety o­n the 1 ball a little better.  I could have hit the ball a little harder and put it behind the cluster down table. I probably would have gotten a shot, and then who knows what would have happened from there?

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