Lots of us love playing snooker after drinking a few. But have you tried playing sober – and tried playing Australia’s Neil Robertson? He’s a blond James Bond and is as cool with a cue, and is deadly with same, as is 007 with his Walther PPK.

But if you must play Neil, know he’s the defending champ of the UK Championship. Just like Bond who comes back in Casino Royale to win the poker pot, Robertson’s stunning take of 9 of the last 11 frames with lots of pots in the final was enough to beat Mark Selby, the Jester from Leicester, who had been up 5-1. The 2014 version will be at the York Barbican, starting November 25th.

Watching Robertson shoot a 147 is like watching an assassin: the shots are in the best order, with fine cuts, leaving shape, while using superior super strategy throughout. In this 147 he took about 14 minutes. The record for the fastest 147, which is made up of 15 reds with 15 blacks for 120 points, then the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black for another 27, was made by Ronnie “The Rocket” O’Sullivan who wielded the wand of wonder for 5 minutes and 20 seconds. O’Sullivan’s Twitter handle rightly says it all: ‘I have a degree in snooker and I am a genius..haha’

Most people are lucky to have one favorable nickname. Mr. Robertson seems to have three: The Thunder from Down Under; The Melbourne Machine; The Centurion. Despite being the only non-Brit to take snooker’s Triple Crown of The Masters, The World Championship, and the UK Championship, the leftie is rather unheralded at home – despite playing a pleasing, not-too-“safe”- game that entertains, rather than dulls.

And he’s classy like James Bond, a traditionalist not a faddish fashionista, so far as snooker is concerned. He eschews, though doesn't pooh-pooh, the one-frame shoot-out competitions, held at the Blackpool Tower, that are popular with some. It’s just not for him...

For even Robertson, however, snooker can be humbling. Just this September in the Shanghai Masters, Robertson, up 3-0 lost in the first-round to Michael White 5-4! But he can take solace in the fact that he is the FIRST player to amass more than 100 competitive century breaks in one season. And one of his success factors is practicing with a purpose. He doesn't waste time aimlessly puttering around. Another factor is finding a consistent sleeping pattern to cope with the worldwide tournament travel schedules.

Neil figures the current field has more depth than ever, with upsets more common, and this, in part, is because there is less time to prepare for tournaments, being so many more of them.

You know how most of us never work on the weak parts of our game(s) in life? Neil is an exception. Once “break-building” was not a strong part of his snooker play. He made it so by practice, another key to his success (and to the single season 100 competitive century breaks...)

He attributes his relative lack of fame in his homeland to, not only his absence, being out of the country 11 months of the year - but to the Aussies’ love of outdoor sports, like cricket and “Aussie Rules” – Australian football. (Perhaps winning nearly £2 million in prize money over the course of his career, with proficient snooker demonstrated at the tender age of fourteen, helps assuage any hurt feelings of unintended-non awareness back home.)  

Besides being tall enough to reach for most shots, Robertson keeps limber, by keeping in shape. He goes to the gym and has added running to his regimen. O’Sullivan’s now a runner too, and both are breaking the fat-slob snooker stereotype to shreds.

And here’s a question that will have combatants verbally tear each other to shreds: is snooker a game or a sport? Robertson feels it’s a sport. Many fans feel it’s a game, like darts.

Whatever you call it, it sure brings out the phenoms and wunderkinds. Mark Selby turned pro at 16. And right now Welsh native 13-year-old Lewis Sinclair has been causing a stir and will be playing the “People’s Champion” Jimmy ‘Whirlwind’ White, the 52-year-old pro. Sinclair wants to eventually go pro...He attends Croeyceiliog school.

Speaking of schools, many kids are scoring better at math and English because of “Cue Zone Into Schools” a program put on by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association to get kids seven and up to learn about functional snooker on six-foot tables. Started in 2013 in the UK, kids with behavioral issues have benefited.  Fun while learning. Who’da thunk...

And who would think that weather conditions outside affect snooker playing conditions inside. If it’s humid out there, it can make for poor playing in there, as the cloth is stickier. Mr. Robertson noticed this particularly in some tournaments in China. He also recognizes there is little, other than playing on a more suitable-to-moist weather cloth - that anyone can do about it.

So, all eyes will be on the UK Championship which features, since 2013, all the players starting in the same round. If you can’t be in York, BBC is televising it.

And here, finally, is Neil Robertson telling it like it is in an interview with sports journalist Desmond Kane: ‘Snooker no longer a sport where idle, greedy or lazy can prosper.’

   

Should we hate cyclists or merely abhor them?

You see them everywhere, cycling to and from work, miles each way. It’s a mission for them. Financially it’s not necessary they do this because bike equipment is costlier than divorce, but something impels these folks to bicycle through sleet, snow, and yes, some sun, festooned in lights strong enough to start their own laser-show troupe group.

Here’s a scoop: no cyclist likes to be passed by another cyclist. Ever. It’s irrational because as cyclists readily admit, each rider rides differently weighted and geared bikes, and cyclists range from the shape of donuts - soft as whipped cream, to the shape of string beans - hard as nails.

But once a cyclist gets into the car (when hell freezes over, or the bike is in the shop after being pranged by a car) a transformation more powerful than religious conversion occurs: a car-driver mentality immediately takes over and all cyclists are instantaneously deemed as vermin to be road killed.

And by any stretch of the imagination, the stretched bicycle shorts are not a good look. (And at around $100 they might not be a good buy.) If we wanted to see your particulars, your units, your junk – we would have joined airport security. Keep the aerobic pornographic bib shorts where they belong: in an old dusty dresser in an older musty attic. If you must share, picture the panties on your YouTube channel or Facebook page.

On the subject of aerobics, how healthy is cycling, breathing in all that car and truck exhaust, not to mention the fumes from your clothing if laundering regularly isn’t your bag? Would it be better to not subject your lungs and heart to pollutants?

Do cyclists get cycling “highs” like runners do from running? If heart rate is a factor in determining such a “high” they may not because runners, generally, for the same amount of strenuous work, have a heart rate tick-tocking about five percent higher than does our diligent cyclist. The answers aren't clear as to why this is so – but it may be due to the fact that being on a bike is easier on the heart, but harder on the backside, than is being on one’s own two feet.

And this study by Appalachian State University should give cyclists, if not a high, a least a buzz. It found that cycling doesn't damage muscles like running does. Take that, you marathoner mooks.

The other morning at 5am I was blinded by the white super-bright light coming at me. I had never seen such a sight before and only when it got to within about 20 feet from me could I see a cyclist behind the light. God it was powerful. I wonder what lighthouse is missing their bulb? And what does such a luminance – disturbance – Light Emitting Diode (LED) cost? And do heirs get the lights - and bikes, the shoes, the helmets, the whole ensemble when Dad or Mom is recycled six feet under?

Are cyclists cultish like bike couriers are? Nobody can possibly be as weird as couriers but commuting cyclists do have forums to share information on locks, night riding, colds, road-friendly gearing, steering, leering, smart-wool socks, hard-crash rocks....

Do cyclist commuters have groupies like rock stars? Like when a vocalist and lead guitarist strut sweating off stage - they get to pick the princess or prince of the litter for cavorting and canoodling. Does such an eager ensemble await our bicycler? And no, having someone at home, like a loved one, waiting for you to disembark and disrobe, doesn't count. We’re talking of a throng of lovely lasses or lively lads waiting behind the rope, panting, as you wheel in to your bike-locking station, panting.

Now how about political correctness? Has it permeated the world of pedal bikers? When a cyclist cuts us off are we allowed to catch up and whip them with our spare chain worn as decoration or make them into pavement as we beat the tar out of them, or are we so cowed by PC behavioral diktats - and timidity - that we, instead, insist that such a thoughtless barging in action have the offender "punished" with a five minute “timeout?”

Turning to cycling’s version of domestic violence/disturbance...what NFL player Ray Rice did on the elevator to his wife was despicable. How domestiques like Floyd Landis were treated by Lance Armstrong, when Floyd wanted to come back to the U.S. Postal Team after he had lost his Tour de France laurels after testing positive for testosterone – and Lance told Floyd to take a hike,  was merely unconscionable. But it’s odd that Janay Rice still stands by her man, while Floyd can’t stand his.

How’d we get to here?

Oh dear.

Cyclists argue they’re good for the environment. True, they don’t belch like transports, but they might have flatulence. (And they kill pedestrians like Jill Tarlov.) Wind farms are supposedly good for the environment too, but they’re hellish for birds. And cyclists, lest we forget, kill the view – although it does please one safely ensconced in a bucket-leather seat in a low riding cool-cat car to see some cyclist struggling up a hill.

Cyclists are overbearing as they prate on about saving the planet with their eco-friendly exertions. They grate on the nerves. But when they hit a sewer grate it fills the hearts of us meanies with happiness, but some sadness later, when it is discovered the bruised bicycle rider wasn't a lawyer - but lawyers are a blog for another day.

 

 

Men’s Table Tennis is riveting at elite levels. The players dart, crouch, reach, lunge, and slide - in split seconds - as the ball whooshes at about 175 km/hr.

And that ball is usually spinning. The spin(s) alone can clock in at 150 revolutions per second. So, spinning shots or no, who is gonna win the Liebherr 2014 Table Tennis World Cup in Düsseldorf Germany October 24th to 26th?  Can Xu Xin, winner of the Liebherr 2013, repeat?

And why do Xu Xin and his Chinese compatriots mop the floor with other countries’ competitors in this sport? Discipline and dedication are partly why the Chinese “kill” in Table Tennis. Talent is a huge factor and a tradition of excellence also helps. And...

Now GET UP. Breakfast is at 7:30am, then warm up for 20 minutes, then train for 2 hours and 10 minutes, then train again for 2 hours and 10 minutes in the afternoon - then practice 2 hours in the evening – and you’ll have completed a typical day at the Chinese National Table Tennis Training Center, in Hebei province, as an international student, looking to improve. You’ll have trained 6 hours daily. For 15 days. All it cost was $1,490 - some sore muscles, stuff ligaments, tender tendons, and a bruised ego.

Now just think what they’ll do to you as one of their promising youngsters or nationally ranked players…

Table Tennis played recreationally or exceptionally, is topnotch. We can play it forever. It’s good for us. But what are we talking in money?

We’re talking some. If you are in the top 50 globally, you’ll be making between 50K to 100K $US. Not big chips. But if you’re presentable, and speak well, you’ll make more from endorsements, tournament appearance fees, lectures, and so forth. Plus, there are tournament prize winnings. The dough beats what an average schmo makes.

As of 2014 things improved financially. The ITTF World Tour replaced the ITTF Pro Tour. In 2014 there are 20 events on the tour. The biggies, in prestige and publicity, are the 6 Super Series events. The minimum prize fund for a Super Series event is $200,000. If, over the year as a singles player, you’ve amassed enough points to be in the top 16 of your sex and played in at least 5 tournaments, you’ll be competing in the Grand Finals for the winner’s share of US$100,000.  Right now, only the Ukrainian-born German fellow Dimitrij Ovtcharov took 1 of the Super Series 6 events. Chinese guys took the other 5.

The game is so fun to play, and simple to watch, it’s easy to forget all the elements involved with battling and batting the ball around. Greg Letts as a player, coach, and umpire knows his Table Tennis. He shares the “basics” here:

You have Power, Work, Time, Force, Displacement or Distance, Mass, Acceleration, Velocity, Initial Velocity, Torque, and Radius. (Please don’t ask me for the formula, there’s no one sitting beside me in physics class I can lift it from.)

Now how about reaction time? How fast are these players thinking, and moving? According to Greg we react to sound faster than we do to sight. (0.14 versus 0.18 of a second.) The top players’ measurable differences in reaction time are in 1/1000ths!

And they’ll be facing a plethora, easily more than 15 types, of possible serve types, such as the old “forehand tomahawk backspin/sidespin serve.” And within this one serve the mix between the back and the side spin will vary, just to mess up the enemy’s head.

There are lots of enemy’s to choose from. One guess estimates that 300 million dabble in this sport, but as you climb the trestle of Table Tennis, you’ll reach and run smack dab into the top ten – of which these 6 Chinese chaps: Xu Xin, Ma Long, Zhang Jike, Fan Zhendong, Wang Hao, and Yan An are included. In fact, competition is so fantastically and ferociously fierce in China, many of the near best, like Chen Xinhua, moved to other countries so they could qualify, after the suitable legal niceties have been met - like waiting anywhere from three to seven years before being deemed eligible - for the Olympics or Worlds.

No matter the venue, it’s amazing to watch a player lob a sky high return from a forehand smash. Their footwork is faster than a bunny rabbit on bennies. Knee joint injuries are quite common. Watching in Slow motion Xu Xin’s shotmaking allows one to discern the deftness behind the forehand and backhand flip, the dead ball (a shot with hardly any, or no, spin) the backhand loop, forehand loop, or the chop, block, or lob.

It’s pretty safe to say, spin or no spin, and nobody’s spinning here, that the Chinese will set the table and fight it out for first place in the Liebherr 2014 Men's World Cup. History is a hard indicator to toss away. Still, upsets do happen in sports and possibly the German, Dimitrij Ovtcharov, who has been ranked by the International Table Tennis Federation as high as fourth earlier this year, could thrill the hometown fans and throw the other 19 competitors, including the Chinese, for a loop – with, if not lots of loop shots, or glorious lobs, then with that “hand-dance” serve he invented. That weird and wonderful serve was voted one of the top 50 inventions in 2008 by Time Magazine.

Time will soon tell what happens this year.