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Show ummiimmmii uiiiiMmiitimiiF siair$i By ROBERT McSHANE f ""' iiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinui A MAGAZINE article published after the 1940 world's cham-plonship cham-plonship three-cushion billiard tournament tour-nament labeled Willie Hoppe "the greatest living argument In favor of the pool hall." That was not an overstatement. No other man has so completely dominated a sport for so long a time as has Hoppe. Few golf fans will agree on an aU-time standout performer. A half-dozen ringside veterans will claim the "greatest" tag for an equal number of fighters. Baseball enthusiasts have a hundred heroes. That isn't true of billiards. Billiard greatness and Willie Hoppe are synonymous. They have been for 40 years. Willie, 53 years old, has devoted his life to the game. From the time he was seven, he practiced from four to eight hours a day. lie was a boy wonder at nine, playing exhibition exhi-bition games all over the country. Thirteen years ago he was referred to as "the grand old man of the cue." Three-Time Champion In 1940 he won for the second time the world's three-cushion championship by winning 20 straight games, a feat comparable to a Tony Galento victory over Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis. In 1941 the New Yorker won his second consecutive three-cushion title, ti-tle, the third during his career. He lost only one match in the 17-game tournament. Hoppe's competitive career really started when he was 12. His father arranged a match for him with Al Taylor, 30 years old and one of the best balk-line players in the coun- i iaiTf&f fi I f f iiniMiiiif filT itifltfwtW&ati WILLIE HOPPE try. Taylor started out by being amused at his diminutive colleague. His amusement gave way to a totally total-ly different feeling when Willie won the match by a score of 300 to 207. In the past 35 years there has never nev-er been a time when Willie did not hold at least one championship. According Ac-cording to his own estimate he has played or practiced billiards for about four hours a day for the last 40 years the equivalent of 6Vi years of continuous play. Allowance for Youth His singleminded devotion to the game is responsible for much of his success. While most of his boyhood friends were playing shinny, baseball base-ball or indulging in some other strenuous pastime, Willie was at his father's pool table, figuring out the tough ones. He had to stand on a soap box because he wasn't tall enough to crouch over the edge of the table. Even today Hoppe uses a side-arm side-arm stroke, the result of learning the game before he was tall enough to adopt a standard shot. Although billiards doesn't pay as well as it did 20 years ago, Willie still makes around $10,000 a year. In the early twenties he was making mak-ing $25,000 a year. Hoppe differs from his contemporaries contempo-raries in many ways. Chiefly, his technique is different. Most professional profes-sional players use the diamond system, sys-tem, which derives its name from the inlaid markers around the edge of the table. A player can figure out his shots by counting these markers. mark-ers. Hoppe has never used this system. He prefers to figure things out in his head. This method has worked quite well for him. When he was only 13, he ran 2,000 straight billiards. Today he holds the world's record run of 25 consecutive three-cushion billiards. bil-liards. He has broken so many records and won so many tournaments tourna-ments that he has lost count. All of which demonstrates why Willie is known as Mr. Billiards. Sport Shorts Luke Hamlin of the Brooklyn Dodgers says bad tonsils caused his poor play last season. He has had them removed. James Brennan, 52. who died in Hinckley. Minn., recently, had beer, president of the Minnesota Amateur Baseball league tor 16 years. Margaret H. Slogar of Cleveland, Ohio, rolled 25 strikes In 34 frames for a 759 three-game total. It s a season record for women bowlers , i |