Recently in Malcolm Clarke Category

Life as a professional pool player is often not what people think. It would be a great life if all I had to do was to practise for 4-5 hours a day and still have a solid income to live on.

But is it realistic?

Last weekend I participated in the 9-Ball event in Nottingham that featured World Champion Daryl Peach, and U.K. number 1 Imran Majid.

Something a bit different today. I was about 3 hours and 20 minutes into what would become a 3 hours a 50 minute journey to the Pool event. I was going through that auto-pilot mode that effects all drivers where we rely on second nature to keep going.

It was around about this point of my journey that I encountered the 'rogue rock'.

Unfortunately my return to the pro tour events did not go exactly according to plan. I was well beaten in both of my matches and played very badly.

The pressure is on, I will be practising more this week as it is now only five days until I go to Solihull for the first event of the tour season.

It will be the first full pro event since I played in Nuneaton in 2003.

Practising 9-Ball can be quite a boring exercise. I fall into the trap of setting rack after rack and trying to run out without any real thought about what I am doing. If I am running them out time after time, that in itself can become mundane. I have always found the traditional practise "drills" boring, like the old-school snooker training which is to place the blue ball on its spot in the centre of the table and using a straight shot into the middle pocket, do that 50 times with focus on your stroke and stance.

I have started to get up really early and set off towards Darlington for a practise session at the Rileys club in the town centre.

It is open 24 hours a day and therefore my decision to put in three early hours of playing before heading back and still finding myself in the middle of the morning worked well last week, you still feel like you have the day ahead of you!

The final date for the decision on who gets the 96 places on the new professional tour is made on or around the 17th December.

The tour are no longer taking anymore applications so players now have to sit tight and wait.

The new 9-Ball tour is now close to confirming the list of entrants. They advertised the tour as a first-come first-served situation where only the fast people would get a place in the maximum 96 strong tour.

Obviously there will be obvious reasons why certain places are guaranteed for certain players..

Apologies for the long delay.

A home move, an arm injury and all sorts of things have stopped me playing recently.

But I'm back, and raring to go.