8-ball, Corner Pocket

He

was a skinny guy with a thin mustache and no teeth. To most folks, this Caesar Morales looked like a dreamer without a chance, some local hero or small-time hustler who thought he could ride a few bar room triumphs to success on the pro billiards circuit. Maybe he was Mexican, or Filipino—he didn't say and no one asked. This was the 1985 Red's 9-Ball Open in Houston, Texas, $10,500 to the winner, where billiards' best came to win, not make friends.

Morales stayed inconspicuous; the guys he came with did not. They were making bets, saying not only would Morales and his $10 cue win his matches, but he would beat the finest shot makers and gamblers in the country by two, three or four racks, in a race to 11. Ludicrous. No rookie no-name could pull that off. Besides, pool was an American game. Sure there were good players from Europe, Japan and Taiwan, and there was a sportswriter, John Grissim, who'd been to the Philippines and claimed there were guys in that country, like a kid named Efren Reyes, who could beat anyone anywhere. But the Americans were still dominant. And yet Morales' buddies were throwing out crazy odds, "giving three or four games on the wire," recalls former pro player and promoter Jay Helfert. "The top American players didn't have to win the match, all they had to do was win seven games. Everybody was jumping on it, betting thousands of dollars. And he was beating player after player 11-3, 11-2, 11-4. I said, 'Who is this guy?'"

This guy won the tournament. And he cleaned up in the back room, during the big-money action that starts when the crowds go home. Before the fans left, though, the mystery shark signed a few autographs. Only then did he reveal himself, signing not Caesar Morales, but his real name, Efren Reyes.

Nita's carinderia is a modest little place on a side street in Angeles City, a dust-choked town two hours north of Manila. It's basically one long room, sparse and blue-walled, with an eating, drinking and tale swapping area up front and two pool tables in back. On an early November weekday, Reyes stands by a life-size cutout of himself hawking San Miguel beer. He bought this place from a friend, the real Caesar Morales, and gave it to Nita, his sister. He's older now, of course, a bit wider around the middle. In jeans and a green polo shirt, a towel over his shoulder, he casually works the table under the gaze of an early afternoon clientele watching perhaps the world's greatest billiards player.

In the Philippines, Efren is known simply as "The Magician," or "Bata," Tagalog for "Kid." Since revealing himself in Texas, Reyes has toured the world, winning, dazz-ling, realigning the game's balance of power and becoming his country's sole bona fide international sports superstar. Efren's exploits are like possessions, bundled up by his countrymen as stories to be shared or traded. The government awarded him the Philippine Legion of Honor in 1999 and his face, along with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's, greets arrivals at Manila's airport. Pool cues have became a hot accessory and new halls have sprouted everywhere. "The Philippines is in search of heroes in the international scene," says Aristeo Puyat, co-owner of Puyat Sports, which sponsors Reyes. "The Olympics are a debacle; we never win a medal. Even in the Asian Games we have a hard time. But here, we have a champion."

There's no centralized billiards body, there are no formal international rankings. But Reyes is indeed the guy everybody in the game wants to beat. Many end up handing him wads of $100 bills. "There are just things he does on a pool table that are a little bit above everybody else," says Helfert. He can play angles and the rails. He can position the cue ball seemingly at will, he excels at the safety game—burying opponents behind balls to prevent a clean shot—and he takes, and often makes, shots others don't see or won't risk. After Houston, he won American tournaments in several different categories—nine ball, straight pool, rotation, one pocket, carom billiards—and two Southeast Asian Games gold medals in 1987. In 1995, he was Billiards Digest's Player of the Year. In 1997, he survived a three-day, $100,000 race to 120 in Hong Kong—billed "The Color of Money I"—against top American Earl Strickland, winning 120-117 and collecting $75,000 (less a $10,000 winner-to-loser payment he and Strickland agreed to before the match). A year earlier in Reno, Nevada, again facing Strickland, he had produced one of the most memorable shots on record. "Earl left him on the end rail totally tied up behind the nine ball," recalls Helfert, the tournament director. "It looked like there was no possible way for him to hit the object ball, which I think was the eight. Efren looked at it for a while, then he kicked the cue two rails back and forth across the table, hit the edge of the eight, made the eight, got position on the nine and ran out and won the match. It's by far the most amazing win I've ever seen. Very few players could have hit the ball."

Already a folk hero, Reyes became a legend at the 1999 World Championships in Cardiff, Wales. As is his custom, he showered before the tournament and not again until it was over—"so the luck won't wash off," he says—then beat players from England, Germany, Japan, fellow Filipino Francisco ("Django") Bustamante and, in the finals, Taiwan's Hao Ping-chang. Filipinos knew he was good, even great. But now he was world champion, and he was theirs.