Geometric Giant

For as long as anyone can remember, Willie Hoppe (rhymes with sloppy) has been a synonym for billiards. When he was twelve, way back when Jim Jeffries ruled heavyweight boxing, Willie was the original boy wonder. The year after Ty Cobb broke into the majors, Willie Hoppe brought the world's 18.1 balkline championship home from Paris. Now 57, greying William Frederick Hoppe is not only the last of the sport giants, but goes right on being one. In only one respect has he slowed down: he no longer jogs around Manhattan's Central Park reservoir to keep in trim; he walks.

Defending his world's three-cushion championship in New York last week, Hoppe was jerking rather than punching through with his deft cue--and that was all but fatal in this most precise of billiard games. Once before he had battled a similar bugaboo that made him fidget around too long, taking aim. He conquered that by counting softly, "One, two, three," shooting on three. This time, he relied on silent concentration.

After three wobbly games, Hoppe's cue began to find its proper voice. The fourth time up, he clicked off two runs of eight, set a tourney mark by bagging the required 50 points in only 20 innings. Once he had found himself, even the lingering aftereffects of amoebic dysentery, picked up on a Central American tour, could not keep him from making the most difficult of shots--such as a six-cushion carom with the object balls frozen on the rail.

To calculate the angles of a shot, nearly all professional players take fixes on diamond-shaped markers around the top of the table. Hoppe does no such figuring, uses no mechanical aids, takes in the required angles with one geometric glance. That eye (and arm) have earned him an average $15,000 a year (for 38 years) in prizes and exhibition fees.

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