Game not over for pool grandmaster
Hein van Staden has won enough trophies in his pool career to fill an entire room in his White River home and then some.
The former world champion is also the only sportsman to have been awarded his national colours in both eight-ball and black-ball versions of the game.
Van Staden has come a long way since the days of playing snooker in the small mining town of Kalulushi, Zambia, as a young boy.
“My dad was working on the mine there and there wasn’t much else to do. They had a big snooker table in the mine mess and I used to sneak in past the bar and go and play there for hours,” he said, while explaining that one of the main differences between snooker and pool is the size of the tables.
Years later, at boarding school in Johannesburg, more traditional sports like rugby, tennis and swimming took priority.
“I never actually took snooker or pool seriously; I only played in bars and pool halls socially. It was only when I was working on the mines in Cartonville in my 20s that I won my first snooker inter-mine tournament,” Van Staden explained.
“But snooker was becoming less popular in the ’70s, mostly because of the size of the tables. So I played a little more pool and lots of golf.”
The 63-year-old said his love affair with sport may have contributed to his divorce from his first wife.
She bought me a little two-man tent and said I should go and pitch it on the 18th hole. She even pawned my golf clubs,” he said, while shaking his head.
He had to wait three years to earn his eight-ball national colours which saw him travel to Malaysia, where he won the eight-ball singles, and Melbourne and Darwin, Australia for the tri-nation tournaments in 1999 and 2000 respectively.
In 2007 he was awarded his Protea colours for black ball, a version of pool in which the rules differ from the eight-ball rules that most people are familiar with.
You just have to remember you are playing black ball. Otherwise, and excuse the pun, you’re going to make a balls-up!” he told Lowvelder.
The same year would bring his career highlight. At the German World Intercontinental Championships, South Africa won the team event and Van Staden won the singles.
“We were playing the final against Wales and the score was even at 12-12. I played the deciding game. I knew if I gave him even half a chance, he would beat me. So I just didn’t give him a chance, I broke and finished the game.”
Soon after, the team was invited to play in the European Championships and took home that title too. Van Staden finished the year ranked 13th in the world.
He still attends the SA Championships religiously and has coached successful provincial teams in his time. In June he will be putting in
12 pool tables at Bosvark Resort and Caravan Park just off the N4 outside town, where he hopes to start a pool business league and promote the precision sport more in the area.
“When I was seven years old playing in the mine mess, it was just for fun. But you know what, it is still just as fun,” Van Staden said with a smile.
