Lee is not a reference to Sang Chun Lee, the Korean-born American who put 3-cushion back on the map in the States. Garcia has nothing to do with Jose Juan Garcia Nunez, the talented player from Colombia, or with Juan David Zapata Garcia, who played so outstandingly in Blankenberge 2018. Nguyen, finally, does not refer to that likeable Vietnamese cue artist Nguyen Quoc Nguyen, currently 11th on the world ranking.
Then what are these names? They are simply very common names for people from Korea, middle- and South America, and Vietnam. What do these areas have in common? They have given the USA a new 3-cushion population. As minorities, you might ask? On the contrary. Americans with a European heritage, with grandparents who had an American passport, that's the current minority in billiards. I don't have reliable statistics, but I would be willing to guess that more than 80% of American 3-cushion players today are (semi) recent immigrants.
There are many billiard rooms in the Los Angeles area. In most of them, Spanish is the first language, English the second. Flushing, Queens (New York) is predominantly Korean. This is where the Carom Café, formerly Sang Lee's room, now owned by Mike Kang, is located. Houston is the fourth largest city in the USA, and it is the new home of many immigrants from Vietnam.
Houston (Texas) was also host to the most recent National Championships in the USA, just last week. In a Vietnamese-owned billiard room, Hugo Patino won his fourth title, beating reigning champion Miguel Torres in the final. Highlight of the week: Patino started that final with a majestic run of 18, for the better part intentional position play. It was a thing of beauty. The two losing semifinalists were John Park and Pedro Piedrabuena, the latter a nine-time winner of the national title. The field, by the way, had no fewer than eight guys named Nguyen.
Patino is of course an American now, but he was born in Colombia. Piedrabuena is from Montevideo, Uruguay. Other former US champions are Miguel Torres (originally from Colombia), Jae Hyung Cho (S. Korea), Mazin Shooni (Irak), Sonny Cho (S. Korea), Sang Chun Lee, (S. Korea) and Carlos Hallon (Ecuador). You have to go back more than three decades to find a US champion who was not a first-generation immigrant (Allen Gilbert in 1988).
This new blood is good news for the sport in the States. Without it, 3-cushion would have lived on as a hobby, in a few private basements, but it would have gone into a coma as a sport. Still, the size of the country and the four-language population of the 3-cushion community do come with considerable logistical problems. The American federation, the USBA, has been a very difficult organization to lead since... well, always. Board meetings on Skype, Google translations, these are things that were not available twenty years ago and they might come in handy today. But the fact remains that American 3-cushion is still struggling to increase membership and make the most of that enormous immigrant potential. Pedro and Hugo are 41 and 64 on the world ranking list, but behind those two there's not much going on.
One of the problems the USBA faces (distances) is also a major handicap for their Confederation, the CPB. Unlike the USA, several middle- and South American countries have a wealth of talent that has already crossed the 1.000 average threshold. But how will a young, ambitious 1.200 player develop into a world class contender if he can't afford to play World Cups? Many of them try once or twice, but if you do not end in the prize money, it's too much of a sacrifice. Half a generation of German, Dutch, Belgian, Danish, French players have given up on World Cups for exactly that reason. Imagine having to fly twice the distance, and paying for these trips on, say, an average Colombian income!
Four years ago, I published an idea that (I thought) could make a little contribution for the better. It never got picked up, maybe nobody liked it. But the situation has changed, we will soon have TWO major players on the field of international 3-cushion. So, I'll put my idea into words once again, and leave it to the UMB and the PBA to like or dislike it:
What if we had low-budget, no-prize-money satellite tournaments in three or four locations? Played in billiard rooms, not fancy hotels. Bogota, Gelsenkirchen, Izmir, Ho Chi Minh City, Los Angeles? Name a different location if you can think of a good one. Players would pay 50 dollars to enter, and - depending on the number of participants - one champion or two finalists could win a plane ticket, hotel accommodations and a guaranteed spot in the qualification stage of a World Cup event or PBA tournament. Again, they may not end up in the big prize money there. But the experience will be ever so valuable. A higher name recognition could help them find local sponsors. And nobody ever spent a week in the company of Nikos and Nguyen and Martin and Sung Won without getting smarter.
Don't you think it would be pretty easy to find fifty Colombian or Vietnamese or Turkish guys (or girls), willing to take a chance for fifty dollars?