cheesemouse
08-13-2002, 06:25 AM
TD's/TourDirectors?????
Years ago in a land far far away there was a tavern called the Hunt&Fish. There was this guy named Kenny Lane who organized and ran the week night 9-ball & 8-ball tournaments along with bigger events on a pretty much bi-monthly schedule. He loved pool and had great people skills plus he could pay a bit. He was the guy that got me back into the game after a 14 year span where I only slammed a few balls around with beer drinking friends whenever we found ourselves in a bar that had some piece of crap barbox in it. The point I'm leading up too is that Kenny got sick and asked me to take care of his scheduled events till he got well. This ended up including a months worth of weeklys and two full blown weekend events that he had been promoting for months. The short story is that it was a mind altering event for me. I got to witness first hand the thanklessness of doing the ground work of being the TD of pool events. When I began this sentence of TD I had only enjoyed playing Kennys events and was blind to the ugly underbelly of the mind of the players. Players who would say they were playing but not show up and not bother to call and tell you, players who would show up at the last minute and expect you to redo the whole chart, players who were traveling together demanding that if any of them were matched in the first round they would not come, players calling and wanting to know who was entered and if certain players were in they wouldn't play, players demanding that they play on this table and not that one, players not wanting to play the final match because they were spliting anyway and wanted to get on the road and the straw that broke my back was the guy who after winning the hill wanted to change the format of the finals, that being one match with the race a couple games longer instead of the losers bracket winner having to beat him twice to win. This complete jerk argued for 30 minutes before I blew my top and said if he did not start the match within five minutes he was out without a penny of the $1,000 first or the $500 second place money, now this guy was the MAN in this area of the country and always sold for the top money in the Calcuttas. Fortunaly for my piece of mind he played and lost...thank god!!! The end of the story is I called Kenny that night and said "Sorry buddy but you better make a miraculous recovery because I have just TD'd my last pool tournament."
What did I learn from this pool purgatory? Now when I play in a pool tournament I never fail to thank the TD for promoting this fine game before I leave the tournament site. Thank you all for doing this thankless job..........
Years ago in a land far far away there was a tavern called the Hunt&Fish. There was this guy named Kenny Lane who organized and ran the week night 9-ball & 8-ball tournaments along with bigger events on a pretty much bi-monthly schedule. He loved pool and had great people skills plus he could pay a bit. He was the guy that got me back into the game after a 14 year span where I only slammed a few balls around with beer drinking friends whenever we found ourselves in a bar that had some piece of crap barbox in it. The point I'm leading up too is that Kenny got sick and asked me to take care of his scheduled events till he got well. This ended up including a months worth of weeklys and two full blown weekend events that he had been promoting for months. The short story is that it was a mind altering event for me. I got to witness first hand the thanklessness of doing the ground work of being the TD of pool events. When I began this sentence of TD I had only enjoyed playing Kennys events and was blind to the ugly underbelly of the mind of the players. Players who would say they were playing but not show up and not bother to call and tell you, players who would show up at the last minute and expect you to redo the whole chart, players who were traveling together demanding that if any of them were matched in the first round they would not come, players calling and wanting to know who was entered and if certain players were in they wouldn't play, players demanding that they play on this table and not that one, players not wanting to play the final match because they were spliting anyway and wanted to get on the road and the straw that broke my back was the guy who after winning the hill wanted to change the format of the finals, that being one match with the race a couple games longer instead of the losers bracket winner having to beat him twice to win. This complete jerk argued for 30 minutes before I blew my top and said if he did not start the match within five minutes he was out without a penny of the $1,000 first or the $500 second place money, now this guy was the MAN in this area of the country and always sold for the top money in the Calcuttas. Fortunaly for my piece of mind he played and lost...thank god!!! The end of the story is I called Kenny that night and said "Sorry buddy but you better make a miraculous recovery because I have just TD'd my last pool tournament."
What did I learn from this pool purgatory? Now when I play in a pool tournament I never fail to thank the TD for promoting this fine game before I leave the tournament site. Thank you all for doing this thankless job..........