Jeff Gates was a good friend of mine for many years - we played a lot of One Pocket against each other, and we also played in a lot of One Pocket partners games. He was a good guy, and also a bit eccentric and a real character.
It was at Chris’s Billiards, not the Billiard Café where Jeff practiced and perfected his epic ‘pocketing 32 balls on one shot’ trick shot…and Hardmix/Ben, no, as a matter of fact it took Jeff not much time at all to set up his shot, and here’s why…
First of all, Jeff (who btw had some pretty good engineering skills) designed and built his own wooden templates to set the balls in so that they would be arranged in the exact same appropriate way every time…then secondly, so that the table conditions would stay exactly the same, Jeff actually rented one of the tables at Chris’s as his own private table – it was kept covered always, and only Jeff could use that table.
As time went by, everybody would wander back to the back room every so often to sweat Jeff practicing his shot. That shot was a sight to see.
I’m sure Jeff is still practicing his shot up there, maybe with Freddy sweating it.
RIP my brothers, Ghost