SnookerFan wrote:Really don't seem five years, does it?
I don't know how old you are but at my age, five years could seem about five minutes. If I only make it to Alex's age, I don't have much further to go. Holden is correct.
Holden Chinaski wrote:RIP Hurricane Higgins! Still the most exciting player ever to pick up a cue.
I would estimate that over half of my "instruction" of how to play this game comes from watching and re-watching Hurricane videos to the point that I probably have most of them memorized. Not so much from a technical viewpoint....modern players strive for robotic repetition of the stroke which is of course the surest path to success. Alex's stroke would vary from shot to shot. From a technical standpoint, it is atrocious. But from Alex, one learns that
passion and
imagination are the primary ingredients to playing the game well. And that passion can work both directions--Alex had sessions that the ball just could not help but pot when he was entertaining the crowd, and he had times when he could not hit the pocket if it were a peach basket when he was in self-destruct mode. The biggest trick of course is to maintain that positive while letting the negative go, and it wasn't often enough that Alex could do that. I think I have learned to "see" the table the way he "saw" the table. I often watch my opponent play a basic thick red to leave on a yellow or green when I think to myself, "He doesn't see the path to black there." More often, I seem to be told how "fortunate" I am with how the white just happens to roll to the black. If more players watch and learn from Alex, it is amazing how quickly their "fortune" will improve.
Thank God for the internet. I will continue to improve my game watching the old videos of the Hurricane until it is my time to go.