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John Tschirhart’s Snooker Life
The Waterloo Club and Beyond
It was at the Waterloo Club, a private men’s club, on an old 6×12 Burroughs & Watt’s Snooker table, with unforgiving pockets and warped slate that my interest in billiards came to birth. At nine years of age I spent hours playing Snooker never realizing the impact the game would have on my life.
My dad had a semi pro snooker player from the legion give me a few lessons. By the time I was 14 I was running about 40 but never seemed to get much better that that. I did a little bit of hustling at Jason’s, a local joint in Kitchener, later called The Billiard Club owned by Neil Hendry, as well the Cornet Hotel. The bar years took me away from snooker but my heart has always remained. When I started my billiard business in February 1982 and the mechanics of pool and snooker tables became more of a focus than the games.
This is an image of the snooker room at the Waterloo Club, circa 1982. It is the first snooker table I ever recovered not having a clue what I was doing. Al Haid, a very good friend of my Dad, and a club member, had owned several snooker halls in Waterloo, “Al’s” at University and King, then Westmount Billiards at Westmount Shopping Mall, gave me my first lesson. I never had a proper level so we borrowed a transit from the “Kieswetter Excavating” a local excavation company who where also friends of my Dad and members of the club. Not the way to level a table but it was a lot better than it had been for years.
At the Waterloo Club circa 1981
Next Tony’s Billiards Guelph Ontario
