Give me a break
By Frank Lacambra
The title won recently by Rubelyn Amit of the Philippines in the JBET poker.net Women’s World 10-Ball Championship was a thrilling and a most satisfying news, coming as it did in a year marked by trouble and dissension on the Philippine billiards front.
For Ms. Amit the victory came as some kinds of redemption after a sorry lose in the 2007 Amway Women’s World Championship. She was so close and yet so far away. That was a real heartbreaker for someone so young who had to carry on her shoulders the hopes and expectations of the whole nation.
In the 2007 event, if you remember, Amit started out hot in the early going, But somewhere in the middle of the game, her game suddenly sputtered. She missed too many easy shots that ultimately did her in.
This time around, Rubelyn came to fight. She was more focused. She was relaxed. And learning from her disastrous experience two years earlier, she not only practiced a lot but also prepared herself mentally. In the end her poise and skills—and knowing that the hometown crowd was behind her—made all the difference in her world-class performance.
What made her win all the more memorable and priced was the fact that she topped a star-studded field graced by reigning champion Lien Shin Mei of Chinese Taipei, World No. 1 Kelly Fisher of England, and European 9-ball, 8-ball and straight pool champion Jasmine Ouschan of Austria.
Rubelyn, indeed, deserved to win a tough, high-caliber championship. Something we cannot say of the recent major Philippine men’s tournament (without taking anything away from the eventual champion Ricky Yang who played masterfully) held just a week before the women’s world 10-ball event.
As billiards aficionados ruefully observed, the Philippine Open 10-Ball Championship attracted some of the biggest names in men’s pool (Souquet, Hohmann, van Boening, Deuel, Petroni, Appleton plus strong contingents from Chinese Taipei, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia) but what an embarrassment that the Philippines could not field its cream of the crop.
Internationally known players came all the way from all over looking forward to battling the cream of the crop of Philippine billiards, but they ended up playing against second- tier players, except for a few formidable players like Manalo, Gabica and de Luna.
How can we have a major billiards event without the likes of Bata Reyes, Django, Alcano, Pagulayan and Luat, just to mention a few? Unthinkable! But unfortunately, that’s what happened. And unless the people running the country’s billiards affairs wake up to this sorry situation, we see trouble ahead.
Perhaps it’s about time the POC—if not President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself—took a direct hand and look into what’s bugging our billiards community. The squabbling among our billiards leaders and top players, as we have said in an earlier piece, is not doing the country any good.
The whole world looks at the Philippines as the “new epicenter of international billiards” and we had better take this matter seriously.
This image is a tremendous asset that we should build on and not destroy just because of the narrow selfish interests and greedy motives of a few. The image is good for business, tourism especially. And it’s good for the game, too. Because of it the Philippines has become a powerful magnet, attracting the best and the finest billiards players to our shores.
But if we don’t fix the problem soon, we will fritter away our edge as a billiards mecca in no time.
