Your Shot of the Day (OT)

Chris Melling's insane runout—three "shots of a lifetime" in one rack. In competition, no less. The first shot (my favorite but the one the announcer makes the least fuss over) is so inventive most players would never see it; the second shot is the kind of trickshot YouTubers try over and over again until they get it; and he tops it off with a four-rail called shot through traffic that you have to see to believe. Eight ball and out.

It would be fairly amazing to have any one of these shots rescue a runout in competition. To have all three in one rack makes this a must-see and fun even for non-fans.

Chris Melling, born 1979, is a two-time World Rules British 8-Ball champion from Keighley, West Yorkshire, England.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Joe B: "Mike, Pool, well here we go again...not interested in pool. Watched the short video and I have to tell you those three shots are something for the ages! Impossible, must be a trick video. But, no, real they were and probably will not be seen again soon. Thanks for the OT entry. Well worth the side trip."

Benjamin Marks: "Astonishing!"

David Brown: "Wow!"

D. Hufford: "I watched that. I suppose it showed some good shooting, but I would not know. But what I do know is that for the next three weeks, the idiot algorithm at YouTube will recommend every pool (or is it billiards?) video ever made to me. After three weeks, maybe I will be able to discuss the shot more intelligently."

Mike replies: Oh, yeah, you're complaining! I'm effectively an Internet researcher. Just in the last five days I've been to pages featuring: the sales figures for the Lexus RC-F; Aretha Franklin's top hits; pictures of the Ricoh GXR; the charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale; floorstanding home stereo loudspeakers in not one but three price ranges; the difference between elks and moose; CPAP machines; Harlan Ellison's books; the height of corn (which apparently has to be specified as "corn-on-the-cob" in Europe, as they call corn what we call grain); and the difference between "market cap" and annual sales for corporations. And believe me, that's only the very topmost tippy-top of that iceberg. You should see what the video, advertisement, and content algorithms think I'm interested in!!! It can be quite bizarre, and sometimes untraceably mystifying....

Since you asked, "pool" not only consists of many mostly imperfect games with fluctuating rules, but it doesn't even have a real name. "Billiards," as pool is sometimes half-correctly called, is, strictly speaking, three-cushion billiards, a game played on a table with no pockets that was hugely popular when Babe Ruth was playing baseball yet is essentially unknown today. The little bastard zygote name "pool" comes from betting pools. And by the bye, a "billiard" is "any shot in which the cue ball is caromed off an object ball to strike another object ball." Willie Mosconi, a dignified and conservative man who worked hard  to raise the tone of the game, attempted to establish the name "pocket billiards" for "pool," but the English (or rather, those English who voted in favor of Brexit) ruined that. They felt obligated to, as it fell under the cloud of their gleeful but insecure national pastime of making fun of all American sports.

John Daw: "The video was shot with an A7III...just saying...."

Comments

[Richard Parkin]

Not really OT as this fits with all those recent suggestions here about the limitations of your equipment being one of the routes to creativity — Chris Melling says he is forced into playing certain shots because he’s only 5ft7in and so sometimes easier shots are out of reach :-)

[Robert Roaldi]

It's an amazing thing watching someone do something that is miles above what you're capable of, whether it's billiard shots, pro rally driving, writing best sellers, etc. You kind of accept it, you get used to it. But it's depressing thinking that there are probably people who are that much better at sex than you, isn't it?

[Eolake]

As a non-fan (though I was pretty good at Billiards as a youngster), I agree, pretty damn amazing.

[GKFroehlich]

Thanks, Mike. Amazing indeed! I've decided it's finally time to put my custom, two-piece pool cue up for sale on eBay. (I'll probably apply the proceeds to the new world-class mirror-less entry that Nikon's about to introduce).

[Franklin Berryman]

Yawn.

[Jim Arthur]

That is amazing. I like how Mika had the best seat in the house for the swerve shot and gave absolutely no reaction. The language of this post sent me to Wikipedia’s glossary of cue sports terms where I learned that Chris was most definitely not “on the lemonade”.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Gorgeous massé shot.

[David Boyce]

Someone once said to me that they believed the best film and photo lighting people come from a pool/billiards/snooker background. They knew about angles and bouncing light almost instinctively.

[David Zivic]

So I woke up this Sunday morning and was just really bored with all of that Foto stuff. I decided I would watch the grass grow from outside my living room window, and also observing how fast my second coat of Navajo White was drying. That's called multi-tasking. I decided that I need something more stimulating in my pathetic life, so I checked out Saturdays posting of TOP. I have to admit those were some awesome shots. There are two pool tables in Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico (pop. 5000) where I live. I've played on both of them. I'm ready for some Football!

[Dave_lumb]

Pocket billiards?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pocket%20billiards

[See what I mean? Ruined. Damned English! --Mike]

[c.d.embrey]

Mike said: Oh, yeah, you're complaining! I'm effectively an Internet researcher ...

c.d. says: Always use the right tool for the job. DuckDuckGo doesn't track, store your info or follow you around with ads. I use this with both Safari and Firefox. https://duckduckgo.com I also use Firefox's Private Browsing for 'net-surfing without a trace https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/private-browsing/

You may also be interested in Privacy Badger, a free and open-source browser extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Firefox for Android created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

For encrypted e-mail I use ProtonMail https://protonmail.com

[Robert Rosinsky]

Geometry, trig, and physics, combined with hand-to-eye prowess. Chris Melling is a savant.

[Patrick Dodds]

Do you know bar billiards Mike - with the wooden pegs, the holes in the slate, the neat little scoreboard?

[Rob Campbell]

You were joking about the "pocket billiards", were you not? I hope.

Those morons who want to Brexit are ruining my life here in Spain; no, I don't expect them to weep for me. I weep for them.

Would anybody here walk out on their very best customer base because there MIGHT be a promise of a tinned sardine somewhere else?

You couldn't make it up. But someone did. And the lemings follow.

[rob mckeen]

Great shots , however your observation about pocket billiards and brexit are a bit off mark , pocket billiards is a past time that can only be enjoyed by men. Quoting Monty python “ nudge nudge know what I mean sir” !

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I only mind off-topic posts if they suck me in, make me spend time, and I regret the time. And that's obviously half on me, at least.

The pool posts have cost me quite a bit of time, cumulatively, but I don't regret it, so that's okay.

I sometimes regret not having seen enough interesting posts about photography, though. (Not especially badly just at the moment, though.)

[Joe]

Truly amazing. What I don't get about the coverage, though: why in the world did they replay that great shot in fast motion? I kept waiting for the slo-mo replay -- but no! They played it back essentially too fast to follow...

[Dillan]

That's just amazing!

[Dave Millier]

Non-Brexit voting Englishman comment: why do Americans call "sport" "sports"? To my ear, it sounds like "sheeps". Sport is its own plural.

[David Runyard]

The post by Rob Cambell may be his personal opinion, but is also politically biased and has, may I suggest, no place here.

[Rob Campbell]

Tell that to Mike, who introduced it

:-)