Challenger

Willie Hoppe saw a friend in the second row, and on his way to the table he stopped and shook hands--with his left hand. To use his right would have dislodged the poise of the fine muscles there. The table stood on a carpet in the middle of the ballroom. He began to play with confidence and a measured rhythm. From four sides of the room the faces of the crowd, banked in rows, in the shadow, in the airless heat, watched him without moving. This was an important evening for Willie Hoppe. Boy prodigy, now nearly 40, balkline billiard champion of the world before he had a beard, now challenger to the German, Eric Hagenlacher, he was making a final effort to get his championship. After a run of 23 he failed. Hagenlacher, very pale, began to click his white ivory ball against another white ivory ball and a red ivory ball. He made a run of 283, his best run of the evening. Hoppe could not keep the balls together as he could when he was a boy and the marvel of the country, but making long runs out of desperate, impossible shots he finished the match (begun two nights before) a winner, 1,500 to 1,387.