Word: matsuyama
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Back from Belgium to the U. S. rolled the world's 18.2 balkline billiard championship. Jake Schaefer of Chicago, champion before and son-of-a-champion, beat Welker Cochran of Hollywood in the deciding match, 400 to 328. Both finalists had first to defeat Kinrey Matsuyama, adroit "Japanese Molecule" (TIME, Feb. 18). Several players beat 1928 Champion Edward Horemans...
Handicapped by lack of reach and dapperling hands, Matsuyama came by his skill psychologically. He learned the game in Japan, where its finicky precision is enormously popular among a precise people. In Tokyo, before the last earthquake, there were 321 billiard halls full of grave little yellow men studying the motions of two white balls...
...Matsuyama's beady eyes watch every move his rivals make in tournament play. From a mental pigeonhole he was able, last week, to draw the information that Horemans was weak only in open-table play. The discovery of this secret defeated the champion...
...Matsuyama had the frailties of the other players on file, as well. He decided that Welker Cochran was "too daring and care-less," that portly Felix Grange was "weak on nurse." Jake Schaefer, a smooth fingered youth from Chicago, son and namesake of a five-time champion, was the only one who worried the little Japanese...
Schaefer he could find no technical flaw. In the mental notebook there was one entry, however: "Lacks fighting spirit." Said Matsuyama, "Put Schaefer on a table a foot higher than the regulation table and I'll play him for $1,000 a side...