100-Minute Match

This past Tuesday I had an assignment later in the evening, so I knew I'd need to play early. We won the coin toss and so we had the other team put up first. They put up a 3. I kind of winced at this, and I wondered how smart it would be to put myself up. It would mean that I would have to win four games whereas their player would only have to win two. I probably could have passed and we could have put up a 3 or a 4. But I knew I'd be tense watching somebody else play a potentially long match ahead of mine, and I certainly would have rushed once it was my turn. Plus, we knew that night we'd only have five players total. So I decided to play first. I won the lag and went on to win the first game. Toward the end of the second game I rushed into and botched what would have been an airtight safety, giving my opponent ball in hand. He went on to run out easily for his first win, putting him one win away from victory. That's when I started to regret having put myself up a against a 3. Our third game alone went nine innings and easily lasted 25-30 minutes. But I won it and got the momentum back on my side. There's definitely a mental advantage to winning a game that takes that long. A 30-minute game, with lots of coaches and safeties, can definitely fray your nerves if you come out of it on the losing end.

He racked and went to the restroom. I broke and before I knew it I won the fourth game. As I recall he still had quite few balls on the table. I tried to resist the temptation of thinking that he had given up or was cracking under pressure. As he was racking for the fifth and final game I was in line for the restroom. I told myself to stay focused and not take any risks. At the end of that game we each had two balls remaining. He messed up what I thought was a risky attempt at a safety. His 15 was frozen to my 5 along a rail and it looked like he tried to hide the cue ball behind both of them. In trying to do so he busted them apart and left me open on my 5, leaving us at the situation diagrammed above (approximately, as always). All I remember is that I was left with a dead-on, straight-in shot on the 5 in the corner. My 6 ball was too far out to try to cut it into the same corner pocket. I looked it over a bit, wishing there was a way to "cheat" the pocket a bit in order to give me a better angle on the 6. So at position C1 I got ready for a follow shot, hitting the cue ball on top so that it would follow and hopefully leave me a makeable shot on the 6 into the other corner. Not wanting to follow the 5 into the pocket, I hit the cue ball a tad too softly and it ended up at C2. Cutting the 6 ball into the other corner pocket from there would have resulted in a cue ball scratch. So I opted for the kick shot on the 6. I took my time with it and hit the cue ball with no english. It looked good coming off the rail and made firm contact with the 6 and the 6 went in. The cue ball hadn't even stopped rolling before I marked up the side pocket for a soft tap-in shot on the 8. What's even better, I found out the next day, is that our newly-designated 4 beat a 4 and one of our 3s beat a 6 in the final match to give us a win.