Pulling out the trick shots

It was nearly midnight.

Bob Stangby had in hand his sufficiently chalked-up pool cue with pearl inlay inside Woody’s Lounge, and he set up the “I’m not too busy” trick shot.

He was there most of Wednesday, hunkered over the slate pool table in a Woody’s Lounge ball cap and wearing a golf shirt embroidered with Woody’s Lounge. He was there again Thursday afternoon, clearing off the green cloth for another round of practice.

It’s about six hours on jump, prop, novelty and massé shots in anticipation of his trip to the Dr. Cue Classic Artistic Cup pool competition this weekend in Louisville, Ky.

“Almost all of these shots are about the setup,” Stangby said.

So set up he does, over and over.

Artistic shot after artistic shot — he performs creative interpretations of how to get out of difficult conundrums that casual pool players find themselves in but usually scratch their way out of.

Near him is the a three-ring, two-inch binder that contains the 40 shots he’s required to master for the tournament organized by famous pool player Tom Rossman.

Next to the black folder is a spiral notebook. Page after page contains an eight wide and five deep grid of boxes. Stangby keeps score there.

The first time he monitored his shooting he got frustrated and quit.

By Wednesday, he was tallying more than 200 points.

“One of his favorite sayings is if you really want to be good at this just practice,” his friend Bill Bradshaw said.

Woody’s is Stangby’s beer saloon. He’s owned it for about four years.

Watching a proficient pool player perform the art of a curving massé shot around two balls on a 75-cent-a-game table inside a smoky neighborhood bar that offers Shiner Bock at $3.75 a longneck is like seeing Pistol Pete Maravich perform a wrist pass in a Louisiana high school basketball gym with wooden bleachers.

It just feels right — a setting like taking a professional boxer to his neighborhood’s back alleys where he learned to fight off the bullies or a PGA golfer to the old muni course where he learned a draw shot as a 13-year-old.

When Stangby’s not practicing he can be found at the end of Woody’s long bar, computer in front of him, reading online or just thinking.

He’s always thinking, his wife, Terri, said, always striving for his best in whatever he’s good at. He’s a scratch golfer, a plus-200 average bowler, a certified master jeweler and an investment broker. When the couple first met in Winkler County, she asked him why he was so good at everything. He said if he wasn’t good at it he didn’t do it.

“When he starts something that is all he thinks about,” Terri said. “He has an obsessive personality.”

At 11 p.m. on Wednesday, he’s flaunting the good by performing the “just showing off” shot Steve Mizerak made famous in a 1970s Miller Lite commercial. He finished a jump shot where the cue ball finds the lone empty spot in a nearly full rack after hitting the missing ball into a far corner pocket.

Bob Stangby’s original pool shots came 40 years ago as a 10-year-old inside the Golden Cue in Redwood Falls, Minn. He came to the Permian Basin as a golf pro in 1985 and has been playing pool inside Woody’s Lounge on North Dixie Boulevard since 1988, he said.

He began practicing trick shots about eight years ago.

“Just because they’re interesting,” Stangby said.

He’s a good pool player.

He and Terri were the male and female 2006 summer session top-rated players for the Independent Pool League of Texas.

He finished ninth in the state eight-ball championship two years ago.

Stangby believes if all goes right that he’ll be competing on the artistic tournament’s final day and finish in the top 10.

Bradshaw has a lot of confidence in his friend, confidence honed after losing plenty of pool games to Stangby.

“I’ll put it this way,” Bradshaw said. “I’m a little bit hardheaded and think I’m pretty good at pool, too. I should have used him as a tax write-off.”