Everything about Ralph Greenleaf totally explained
Ralph Greenleaf (born 3 November 1899 in
Monmouth, Illinois, died 15 March 1950) was an
American professional
pool and
carom billiards player, a twenty-time World Pocket Billiards Champion, whose ability and charisma dominated the sport during his heyday.
His
obituary in
The New York Times said of Greenleaf, in March 1950: "What Babe Ruth did for baseball, Dempsey did for fighting, Tilden did for tennis...Greenleaf did for pocket billiards."
The championships of his era were contested in the game of
14.1 continuous ("straight pool"), but varied in format from contest to contest and were not an annual events. Championships were
challenge matches between two players often played over several days to relatively high numbers (1,500 for example).
He was one of the first three members inducted into the
Billiard Congress of America's
Hall of Fame, in 1966.
Greenleaf married
vaudeville actress
Amelia Ruth Parker, a
Eurasian known by the
stage names "Princess Nai Tai" and "The Oriental Nightingale", with whom he tourned when not competing, giving
trick shot demonstrations.
In a pool championship match, Greenleaf was a fierce competitor, winning his first world title in 1919, as well as others, off and on, through 1937. His only unbeatable enemy was considered the bottle, though even his worst bouts rarely seemed to interfere with his performance. In 1942, he came in third place, behind
Willie Hoppe and
Welker Cochran in a World Championship
Three-cushion billiards match.
During this era, the press used euphemisms like "playboy" for sports idols and other public figures who, like Greenleaf, suffered from severe alcoholism. In 1935, the media reported that Greenleaf "fell off the wagon" when he vanished just before a crucial tournament in New York and woke up in Oklahoma under arrest as a vagrant. In order for him to be released, he'd to prove to the constable his identity by walking across the street to a pool hall located in front of the jailhouse in Okmulgee by running 87 balls consecutively. Another distinction of this era in the 1930's is that pool games were traditionally played on
billiards tables that were 5 feet by 10 feet, as opposed to today's professional standards which have tables that are 4.5 ft × 9 ft, and the (often clay or ivory) balls were bigger than today's
synthetic plastic and resin pool balls.
Greenleaf had a hobby that he took seriously which was raising turkeys and chickens at his farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, in which he made a profit. His last championship title was in 1937 when he defeated
Irving Crane by a score of 125 to minus one.
He died suddenly at the age of 50 from acute internal hemorrhage in the waiting room of a hospital in Philadelphia. He had been ill for several days, but had refused to seek medical treatment by going to a hospital because of an upcoming match he was to have played in New York, scheduled several days after he passed.
World Pocket Billiards Championship titles
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