Jerry Briesath - Part 1 (The Father of Modern Pool Instruction)

Mike Gonzalez 0:19

We've got a special guest that's very special to our co-host.

Allison Fisher 0:24

Very much too. He's one of the greatest and most well-known instructors of all time. It's an absolute honor to have him here. Mark, would you like to introduce?

Mark Wilson 0:34

Today's guest is the most interesting subject that has pioneered many aspects of pool. He also happens to be my mentor. It's an honor to include the father of modern pool instruction and BCA Hall of Famer, Jerry Briesath. Welcome, Jerry.

Jerry Briesath 0:49

Welcome. Thank you, Mark. Mark, that didn't look like you.

Mark Wilson 0:54

No. I've noticed in just the last year I've aged tremendously.

Allison Fisher 1:02

He's not the young Mark you first met years ago.

Mike Gonzalez 1:07

His hair was probably a little darker, Jerry, huh? Yes. Yes.

Jerry Briesath 1:13

Busy as ever, though. I've been driving that car everywhere, huh? How many miles do you have on that now?

Mark Wilson 1:20

55,000 in 14 months. I know exactly.

Mike Gonzalez 1:25

Well, Jerry, it's it's wonderful to have you. We've been looking forward to this for a while and glad to include you and your life story and Legends of the Queen as we get our podcast started. And if you've heard any of our previous guests, you'll know that we always like to start at the very beginning. We know you were born back in 1937 in Winona, Minnesota. So take us through your earliest recollections of growing up as a young lad in Winona.

Jerry Briesath 1:52

Yeah, well, born in Winona, my father ran a one-man gas station, and it was down the street about a block. And he opened at seven, closed at nine for years and years and years. And it was a great business. He did very good there. And and that's that's where I went to high school. And uh started playing golf when I was twelve. We lived near a public golf course. And so I started playing golf when I was twelve, and they bought me a set of clubs when I was fourteen, and I was played on the golf high school golf team. I was number one man the last two years and uh played good, loved to play golf. And then all of a sudden, when I graduated, I went to Milwaukee and and and started working at the Wisconsin Electric Power Company. And a friend took me in a little billiard room on the 13th in Wisconsin, which was on the Marquette campus.

Mike Gonzalez 2:57

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 2:58

And I had five nine-footers and one ten-footer. And that's where I learned to play, fell in love with it, and the guy that ran it was Willis Covington, a hundred ball runner, great player. And but there were no instructures back then. There were none. You couldn't get a lesson if you had tried. And the only lesson you get was well, you should have put more English on that ball. Or less. That was it. That was it. There were no instructures. And so I fell in love with pool and and well as I was born up, I was go growing up on uh lineup straight pool. Learned to play straight pool lineup. And when you lined all the balls up, that bottom bottom ball was near the rail. You could rail first it in a corner just about every time. And and then I started playing 14-1. And I played Bill the owner, and he played a hundred, he had to go to a hundred and I had to go to ten. We played that way, and then it got to be twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and four years later we played even.

Allison Fisher 4:10

Nice.

Jerry Briesath 4:11

Interesting. So he was he was wonderful and ran a nice place. And my first hundred ball run was on that ten foot table.

Mike Gonzalez 4:21

Oh my. What was the name of that place, Jerry?

Jerry Briesath 4:25

Abbot Crest Hotel Billiard Room. There you go. Well they everybody called it the Abbot Crest. Uh-huh. Little little five six table room. And but he had lots of kids in there. 18 to 25 college kids, and I wasn't that age. And he had he had he had a line when he was a funny guy sometimes. He had a line that if there was an easy run out or an easy shot, he'd say a kind of counter, he'd say, if you don't run out here, you don't like girls. Well, I'm gonna tighten every guy up. Don't never forget that line. I used it here at the retirement club. I say, if you don't run out here, you don't like girls. That was so funny.

Mike Gonzalez 5:12

Well, listen, you've you've given us the accelerated version getting through high school and to that first pool room in Milwaukee, but let me just take you back to you know being five, six. I mean, when you look back, what's your earliest memory? How old were you? I mean, I was probably six, and learning to ride a bike is probably the first memory I have of being a human being. How about for you?

Jerry Briesath 5:33

Well, I remember when everybody celebrated the end of the war in 45. I was about seven years old. And that was big. And uh I remember when the war was on, though, they had exercises, you had to turn the lights out of your house every once in a while. Just and uh so we but just for protection in case we were attacked, you had to practice closing the lights in a town, turning the lights off in a town.

Mike Gonzalez 5:59

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 6:00

That was like that was interesting.

Mike Gonzalez 6:03

And you were probably you were probably too young maybe to have felt it, but uh you know, you remember the shortages involved in World War II and cutting back on a lot of things, right?

Jerry Briesath 6:14

Yeah, yeah. And I remember nylon. Nylon was not made anymore, and rubber was in demand big time. What else did uh that was way back?

Allison Fisher 6:29

That doesn't help the pool table situation, does it?

Mike Gonzalez 6:32

No.

Jerry Briesath 6:33

I had a little they for Christmas when I was maybe nine or ten, they bought me a little two by three pool table with balls about an inch big. And uh I played on that thing, and I could put the cue on my shoulder and and and I could make I could make all those shots, a lot of shots. And here, and I was short. I was very short. I was the shortest person in the tenth grade. And and but I then I started growing in the tenth grade and went from four ten in the tenth grade to six feet in just a few years. Yeah, very short. So I had a short set of clubs, but I could play good I played good with them, and and when I got to be seventeen, eighteen, I was growing fast and got a big set of clubs and kept playing that golf.

Mike Gonzalez 7:36

Well, you know, had you had you pursued golf instead of pool, maybe I would have had you on my pool podcast, Jerry.

Jerry Briesath 7:43

Well, uh a lot of people, a lot of people uh said, Why don't you? And I but I I just didn't. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 7:51

Yeah. Well, so tell us a little bit about your folks. You mentioned your dad, one man operated a gas station, and just for our younger listeners, who only just pull up to a pump and put it in themselves and don't know how to check the oil and don't clean their windshield. Tell us a little bit about what that was like.

Jerry Briesath 8:22

And it was uh just automatic that you checked all the tires and checked the oil. Just automatic. When I I remember prices of 22, 23 cents a gallon. And but that went on a long time. And the police officer, my dad, liked to play cribbage. So about three or four days a week, uh a squad car would be parked right next to the door of the station to go in on one side of the pumps, and they play cribbage in there every morning for a couple hours. And I go over there and there was that police car there. They were good buddies, they played cards every day.

Mike Gonzalez 9:07

Did you work at the gas station?

Jerry Briesath 9:09

Oh, yes, I worked a lot many hours growing up. Pumped a lot of gas. And he had a pit, no uh no hoist car over a pit. He had to climb down a ladder and uh not the oil out and stuff. And he there was a trailer park behind the gas station. And I don't know, maybe twenty, thirty trailers. And so my dad had sliced ham, sliced beef, he had one of the first convenience stores. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the first, I don't know, but he's and he had they ran a c chart they could charge it there and everything, and uh so he sold a lot of food, and every more Saturday morning I had to stock the shelves.

Mike Gonzalez 9:56

How uh how many years did he have that gas station?

Jerry Briesath 10:00

Oh boy, to he then the shell shell gave him a bigger gas station later, and but that was until he retired, he retired from there from his gas state from one of his gas stations.

Mike Gonzalez 10:11

Okay, so from the move to Milwaukee then, would that have involved him running a station in Milwaukee as well?

Jerry Briesath 10:19

No. Uh uh. When I got to Milwaukee, I uh I found that billiard room and that got me in the pool.

Mike Gonzalez 10:27

Yeah, yeah. And what about your what about your mom? Was she a homemaker or did she work? She was a homemaker.

Jerry Briesath 10:34

She worked at the gas station sometimes. And in later years she she'd work in it, he'd go home and have a rest and she'd go back. It was only a block away.

Mike Gonzalez 10:44

So And was your dad a pool shooter or did you learn from others?

Jerry Briesath 10:49

No, no, he did no sports. No sports. And he worked on the farm when he was young up on up in the the ridge, it's called it was uh well known as a little river town and has bluffs, the bluffs, 300-foot bluffs, maybe 400 feet, in the river, you know, on the side of the river valley. And he worked up on the farms here with his his relatives. His mom and pop died when he was young.

Mike Gonzalez 11:19

Gotcha, gotcha. So so you taking up pool and golf as a kid, you must have had pretty good hand-eye coordination. Did you play other sports as well?

Jerry Briesath 11:28

Yeah, I played I was a short, but I I love I played basketball in junior high school and and track, I ran. I ran. I could run pretty good. I ran I did the mile. And uh I didn't win any trophies, but you did it. I could run.

Mike Gonzalez 11:49

Yeah. So take us through the pool then, I guess. I mean, what was your first attraction to the game?

Jerry Briesath 11:55

What really got you home? I went to the Abbot Crest with a friend and he he we just kind of fell in love with it. And and so I started playing a lot. Yeah. But that that had some good players there, and then he had a couple guys that came in and play him every week. Bill did. And good players from Illinois, they come and some from the Milwaukee area. But he had good players come in. Some of the best players hung out. There were two or three other billiard rooms in Milwaukee, downtown. That was about a mile and a half away. And uh what were those? Do you remember? The Antlers, Plankington. And Plankington started out with 120 tables a long time ago. Oh my goodness. Wow. There were all kinds of those rooms around the mid around the country with 100 tables, New York, lots of them. And and then they slowly diminished when but during the bad years of 29, 35, a lot of those rooms opened up. Something to do.

Mike Gonzalez 13:06

What else was in Milwaukee? Uh Mark, was there what was the one on the south side? Seems like it's been there for a while. Well, Romines. Yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 13:15

There you go. Row mines. Yeah. Terry, Terry opened up a nice place. He had a bar on the southwest side. And but it with Randy, you know, he whatever he did, was it Randy?

Mark Wilson 13:28

Terry.

Jerry Briesath 13:29

Terry.

Mark Wilson 13:30

Terry.

Jerry Briesath 13:30

Yeah, whatever he did just turned to gold. He was good at uh making businesses go. He did his bar real well. And his billiard room, I think, is still there. His son runs it now, if I'm not mistaken.

Mark Wilson 13:42

Yeah. Romine's first one was at uh 27th in Wisconsin. And uh that was really the the premier room, my preferred place to. And Terry was there all the time and made it work, and that's where he began showing cues as well.

Jerry Briesath 13:57

And then he moved to the south side with a much bigger room. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So but Milwaukee was a big place. There was a lot of good players in Milwaukee. Go to any bar and they play for two to five dollars a game, and you could play all night, and the only time they'd argue with you is whose turn it is to put in 20 cents.

Mike Gonzalez 14:20

So, Jerry, the way you learned, assuming based on what you said about there's really no formal instruction, no real structured lessons. I assume back then you had to learn through observation. That's correct.

Jerry Briesath 14:37

That's correct. And you just watch people and and ask questions. And how do you do this? How do you do that? You remember put English on the ball. And when the when the when the news when the billiard newspapers came out with deflection all of a sudden, I thought, I never do that. I play good, I never used to worry about deflection. I don't it doesn't exist to me. And thinking back, I just pick it up quick, you know, and you just do it automatic.

Mike Gonzalez 15:09

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 15:10

And so I thought that was a big hoax, deflection.

Allison Fisher 15:13

Yeah. Did you have any mentors? Did you have anyone that you aspired to be like?

Jerry Briesath 15:18

No, there were no teachers at all.

Allison Fisher 15:20

Nothing.

Jerry Briesath 15:21

No teachers.

Allison Fisher 15:21

But some good players.

Jerry Briesath 15:23

Wills Cummings that would show patterns and stuff, but no mechanics. That's what was missing. No mechanics.

Allison Fisher 15:31

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 15:32

And uh mechanics is what I enjoy the most teaching.

Allison Fisher 15:36

Yes.

Mike Gonzalez 15:37

Yeah, just the the fundamentals. Yes.

Jerry Briesath 15:41

Yes. That's everything, you know. It's it's uh well when I get a group of a group of people for a class, I get them all together and I say, now when you drove here or flew here I hope you thought, I hope Jerry teaches me to control the what better. Don't say it now. Now say it all together, and they all say, cue ball. And I say, think again. They look with the question, question mark on their face, and I say it, Q stick. You don't touch the balls, you just touch the Q stick. There you go.

Mike Gonzalez 16:20

There you go.

Jerry Briesath 16:21

That's what you control.

Mike Gonzalez 16:23

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 16:23

The better you are, like Mark says, I use Mark's statement all the time. The pros like Allison and others hit the ball within one millimeter of where they ain't where they want to or where they aim the stick. And when you give somebody that information, even a 600 player or 500 player, and you say, Well, that draw shot you just shot, you aimed here, and you shot about 20 millimeters lower than you aimed. So they start to get the picture.

Mike Gonzalez 16:57

Yeah.

Jerry Briesath 16:59

Yeah. You gotta be more careful with the cue, and the backswing is the key to that.

Mike Gonzalez 17:04

Well, I assume that my first pool school, which these two co-hosts of mine were the instructors, that uh that school probably looked a lot like what you would have been teaching.

Allison Fisher 17:19

Some of it.

Jerry Briesath 17:22

Yeah, it's I just love doing that because you can talk people into the common sense of what really makes a good pool player like Mark and Allison controlling the stick. Not uh not the balls. And uh when I teach somebody and I tell people this, if you were a 400 player, want to pay a 500 player, I'd say, well, you just have to be a little careful, more careful with the stick. Everybody has a little circle of error on the cue ball, you have to make that a little smaller. Okay, now I'm a 500, I want to be a 600. Well, you've got to be a little more careful with the stick and make that circle of error a little smaller. Now I'm a 600 player, I want to be a seven. How can I do that? Well, you gotta play, uh be a little more careful with the stick and hit it's the same answer. And of course, playing a lot. Once you get to be a 600, to maintain that, you've got to play quite a bit.

Mike Gonzalez 18:13

Yeah. So again, back uh when you're learning the game, there there must have been something that uh that really excited you about about the game itself, whether it was the challenge, some youngsters just love the sound of that ball dropping in the pocket. What was it that really got you excited about Poole? I don't think I can answer that.

Jerry Briesath 18:32

It just uh just the seeing the balls drop in and seeing what people did and how good they could play just kind of ignited a fire, which made me want to play better and better. Yeah, how much?

Mark Wilson 18:45

Oh, for sure. You were a tremendous inspiration because I was completely unaware of stroke mechanics. I I everybody back home just told me make the ball and win the game, don't miss the ball and lose the game. And so that was a foreign thought that you gave me about controlling the cue. So it took me a while to embrace that because uh I don't know if I have a thick skull or if I was just so indoctrinated the other way, but a combination of that and well, I bought many lessons on the way.

Allison Fisher 19:14

I love Mark tell us about his time with you at the beginning, Jerry, uh, for every post call. About the words of wisdom that you gave to him. Do you want to say what it is, Mark? The words of wisdom.

Mark Wilson 19:26

He knows. He knows what it is. He says, Oh, well, Jim says you want to get better, Mark. Uh I said, Oh yeah, Jerry, I do. He says, Okay, he says, let me see. You hit the cue ball and you put it on the spot and let me shoot to the far corner pocket. And because of what Jim had told me, I was so nervous and concerned, and I wanted to have validation that I truly was good because I've been playing three months. And I I made the ball down there, but I poked it. The tip did not go past the spot. And Jerry says, Oh, okay, I see what you got there. I see what you got. How long did you tell me you've been playing, Mark? And I said, Jerry, I played every single day for three months, only missed one day. And he says, Okay, well, here's what I think. I want you to take two weeks off, and when you come back, I want you to consider quitting altogether. But he did not offer that with a smile, and the shock and horror of hearing this was such that it really woke me up that maybe I don't know too much about it. And uh from there, then that kind of led to you know what we did thereafter. Yeah, I was uh I I always tell people this I, you know, over the course of time because it was such a transition mentally, I bought 50 lessons off of Jerry, but I'm exaggerating a little bit about that. And so, but ultimately back and forth, and then I finally moved there to study under him. And the real number, I was much closer to 100 lessons I bought off of Jerry. And I would even say this, Jerry likes money. And at the end, he finally quit charging me for lessons. And I guarantee you I'm the only guy in the world that he ever quit charging because I'd taken so many. We couldn't break new ground, we had to try to establish the difference in some of these different things. But but it was revolutionary and very exciting for me. And and Jerry Willis Covington was really an inspiration for you when you were younger, right? Because he was a hundred ball runner and you weren't. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And when you when you when you played, when you ran 100 balls on a five by ten, was that lineup straight pool or was that 14-1 straight pool? 14-1. Okay.

Mike Gonzalez 21:26

What's the difference, guys, for our for our listeners that haven't heard that term?

Mark Wilson 21:29

I will explain it. Yeah, the the lineup straight pool, I also agree with this. And back then, straight pool was everything. If you go to the pool room, the only thing you're going to do is play straight pool. You already know what you're going to play. But lineup was after you run the rack, you put them all on the spot all the way back to the back rail, and then four go in front of the head spot. So all 15 will line up like that on a nine foot table. And much like Jerry alluded to, if you don't have good position on that back ball, you can go rail first in behind it and it kicks across into the corner so you can get the balls to start to open. But you had to be very adept at running the line. And it was kind of like maybe shooting the colors in snooker. You had to practice that line all the time because after every rack, they're all lined up. And after actually after every inning. So if I got up and made four balls, then when it's Jerry's turn, all four balls go from the head spot on back because there's room. And then it's his turn with all 15 balls on the table. So you always start with 15 balls on the table. And you know, a good run would be like a 50-ball run. You'd have to hold your focus. It's not as easy as people might think, but it's far easier than 14-1. So that was the distinction there.

Allison Fisher 22:37

Yeah. Jerry, did you say that to many players or just Mark about, you know, having two weeks off and then quitting? Did that come out of your mouth a lot?

Jerry Briesath 22:46

I probably said something like that, but it was in jest, not uh I don't know about that.

Mark Wilson 22:55

No, no, no.

Jerry Briesath 22:56

I wouldn't know. I didn't. That was in jest. That was not a serious.

Mark Wilson 23:02

Why did you mention crossword puzzles and crocheting might be my future?

Jerry Briesath 23:08

Sometimes I used to tell people if on the third day of your class, people a lot of people would fly in for three-day session. I'd say, if on the last day of your class I come in with a set of knitting needles, you're in trouble.

Mike Gonzalez 23:25

That's funny.

Jerry Briesath 23:26

So that was I I I like to do stuff like that.

Mike Gonzalez 23:30

So well, you seem like too nice a guy to really mean it.

Allison Fisher 23:34

So uh I just wonder how many players have quit.

Mark Wilson 23:39

Well, there is. There's a ton of dead bodies in pool that said they wanted to be good until they found out what that takes.

Jerry Briesath 23:45

Yes, hard work. Well so that so then uh I'm gonna I wanted to talk about uh in '67, a man from uh from uh Madison watched me playing tournaments and stuff. He owned a room in Madison and he fired the manager and he called me in Milwaukee and said, I will you be any interest in moving to Madison and buying into my room. I no longer have a manager, and uh so I left the power company and moved to Madison. Wow at 67. And then I ran that room for five years, and my attorney, who was a good friend of mine at the time, said you gotta get your own room. So he looked, he looked, found a building, and then I opened my own place called Cunek.

Allison Fisher 24:36

Fantastic. We saw that. Yeah You saw the your plaque in the background behind you.

Jerry Briesath 24:43

Yes, that was uh that was uh sh should I move my can my phone and stuff?

Allison Fisher 24:50

No, it's f it's fine. We know it's there, but it's that's that's wonderful. So you were thirty-five years old.

Jerry Briesath 24:56

Yeah.

Allison Fisher 24:56

And your attorney said that and you did it, and what a great, great piece of advice that was.

Jerry Briesath 25:01

Yeah, I found a building and a and a nine thousand square feet, we put in twenty-three tables, and it was second floor, and went in there, and there was a guy down the street that had a community center, it was near a high school. There was a high school near the Capitol in uh downtown Madison. And the old guy I could never forgot his name, Bill Hobberlin, would teach the kids in that little billiard room, uh community center, and he he s he said he would send some of the kids down. You go down and see that Jerry, he'll help you. And I'll never forget this. I had a sport coat on, I had to go, I forgot where I had to go. And two of those little 15-year-olds came up, pulled on my coat, pulled on my coat, Mister, would you teach us how to play? And both state champions, both hundred ball runners, Randy, Randy, and Kenny Cross.

Allison Fisher 25:55

Fantastic. Yeah, that is a great story.

Mike Gonzalez 25:59

Yeah, so so you went from the the place in Milwaukee, you're working for Wii Energy, left that job, joined a place in uh in Madison, opened up your own place, Cunek. So a lot of a lot of things happening there. You were playing at a pretty high level by then, weren't you?

Jerry Briesath 26:15

Yeah, I I played my best pool from six probably sixty-two to seventy, and then I but unlike other pros of the hunter ball runners, I I I was working 60 hours a week. And so I was run-of-the-mill. If I go to a world tournament, I win two, lose two, and but I won a lot of state and Midwest championships, I think, in the last fourteen tournaments I played in, I won eight or nine of them. Oh my state Midwest. One of them, one of the last ones was in Rockford. He had big tournaments there. I forgot his name. It's where Dallas West was. Dallas was the best player in Wisconsin in Illinois. I was the best player in Wisconsin at the time. And Dallas was always better than me. He shot a thousand balls a day, and but it's one of those things where I had his number. You know, and I'd 60 him to death playing straight pool. And uh he slapped my hand because he knew he was a lot better than me, but I just had his number and beat him quite a bit more than he beat me. But the last last I broke my hand. I was doing something silly, and I broke my right hand and I had a two-pound cast in my arm with a Midwest tournament starting. I still got pictures of that. And I beat Oh, great player from used to be from where was he from? Babe Thompson. Oh yeah. Yeah, a great player. He went he came out here in Arizona and played much better than he had played in Wisconsin, but he wasn't Dallas's speed, but he was a great player. Played him in Dallas and Cachapaglia in the finals with a two-pound cast on my right arm with two fingers sticking out. I run six or five balls every game. I got a picture, picture of the three of us for second-third. One of them I put that behind my back, and the other one I put it out where people can see it. So that's two pictures. And a cast on my arm and won those uh won that tournament.

Mike Gonzalez 28:26

If Earl Strickland listens to this, that might be something he tries. He's willing to try anything, it looks like.

Jerry Briesath 28:37

But it hurt when I shot hard, it still hurt a little bit, but it's good. I was lucky.

Allison Fisher 28:43

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