Greenleaf v. Rudolph

For the last ten years there has never been a year when Ralph Greenleaf was not, for a while anyway, the world's pocket billiard champion. Last week, under various shaded pyramids of white light in Detroit, he tried to get his title back. Frank Taberski, defending champion, was below form, and it was Erwin Rudolph who played Greenleaf in the finals.

The crowds at billiard tournaments are never very big, but Rudolph and Greenleaf had another audience which followed their contest in newspapers and discussed it in doorways--the enormous and tremendously expert audience of U. S. pool players. Pocket billiards is another name for continuous pool. You play it on a sixpocket table with 15 numbered balls and a cue ball. You must name the ball you want to pocket and the pocket you are shooting for. If you make your shot and knock in some extra balls you may count them too. All other pool games--cowboy, rotation, kelly--are variations of this Green game, but experts shun them. Very serious and sleek in his neat tuxedo, his dead-white face immobile as plaster in the strong light, his oiled hair shining like paint, Ralph Greenleaf made run after run. Once he annoyed Rudolph who, having just missed his 24th shot, complained that Greenleaf had disturbed him by walking around. The referee said he had not noticed it. Greenleaf ran 41 in the first half of the 11th inning, Rudolph ran seven and missed. At the end of the match Greenleaf had his 125 points and the championship to Rudolph's 69.

Rudolph had consolation in the fact that earlier in the tournament, in a match with Spencer Livsey, he had dropped in balls in succession, had beaten his opponent in four innings, thereby establishing two world's records in one game.

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