VIANEN - The Dutch billiard fan Piet Steenis, visiting the Masters these days, is aware that his hobby has gotten out of control. The 51 year billiard fanatic and huge fan of Raymond Ceulemans and Dick Jaspers, is a great admirer of all history that has to do with the BWA (Billiards World Cup Association) from the start of the era. Don't be surprised if you meet people who were involved in the BWA in the stands of the KNBB Jumbo Masters in Berlicum this Friday. "I have invited some of the people for a reunion," says Steenis, who is one of the sponsors of the Masters tournaments for his company for a few years.
The BWA stronghold was founded on December 29, 1985 during a meeting at Hotel Goldener Knopf in the town of Bad Säckingen. The general manager was Dr. Werner Bayer, the first president Willy Schlembach. The glory years, with many high levelled professional tournaments, but also a separation from the UMB, lasted until 1999 with top players from those years like Raymond Ceulemans, Torbjörn Blomdahl, Marco Zanetti, Sang Chun Lee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, Ludo Dielis, Richard Bitalis and other big ones.
Piet Steenis visited a BWA tournament in Ghent for the first time in 1991, in the year that Blomdahl won the overall World Cup standings ahead of Ceulemans, Jaspers, Lee and Dielis. Piet Steenis: ''I was immediately impressed by the ambiance, the professionalism and I never lost that fascination. In fact, it was the birthplace for professional billiards. With the sparse information of those years, and the lack of photos, I tried to create an archive. Fortunately, I got the help of people like Bert van Manen and Jan Rosmulder."
Piet Steenis, service manager at ElectronicPartner (one of the sponsors at the Masters) and father of three children, is really proud of the collection that he has gathered. ''In my house, I have a billiard room that is bigger than the living room, full of BWA memories, but I keep on looking. So if people have things like photos and other BWA memories, I am really interested: magazines, newspaper reports, entry tickets, everything reminiscent of these BWA era."
The search has already led to an interesting collection. Piet Steenis was not a big billiard player himself: ''The love for my sport has turned into collecting. And the BWA era appealed to me very much. I would like to tell the story of an eventful period in billiard history through that entire collection. A lot of material has been lost. I want to save as much as possible.''
For tomorrow, Friday, at the Masters he has already invited a number of people: Cor van Erp, Santos Chocron, Maarten Oldenburg, Willy Minkels and Pierre Cornelissen. "I hope to welcome more people to the reunion."
Piet Steenis (l) with one of his favorite players, Dick Jaspers
