Pocket Billiards

Because pool is a name associated with back-alleys and furtive gambling, pool champions, when they play each other, have a more elaborate designation for their game--pocket billiards. For the first time in many years there were more than eight players in the world's championship pocket billiards tournament which ended in Philadelphia last week. Several of the twelve were ex-champions but the pool addicts who watched them, banked closely under the shaded lamps of Allinger's Billiard Academy, knew that only two had a real chance. They were Erwin Rudolph, onetime Cleveland office boy, a reckless and brilliant player who won last year; and tall, slick-haired Ralph Greenleaf, the handsomest indoor athlete in the U.S., who started to play billiards in Monmouth, Ill., when he was seven, became city champion at twelve, finished fourth in his first world's championship four years later.

Unlike that of most prodigies. Ralph Greenleaf's skill has improved with years. At 32, he was playing for his eleventh championship last week. Greenleaf's dignity did not permit him to emulate his confreres who, before a match, changed their dinner coats for black silk playing jackets. He wore his evening clothes throughout the tournament, entranced spectators by the suave and cautious ritual with which he filed his cue-point, sandpapered it, chalked it, then powdered his sharp-fingered hands. Only once was Greenleaf ruffled. That was in his seventh match when he missed his favorite cube of chalk. Puzzled, he asked his opponent, Andrew Ponzi, if he had seen it anywhere. ''I'm not sure!" said Ponzi, then produced it from his pocket where he had slyly secreted it with several scraps of his own.

The beating that Ponzi received thereafter--125 to minus 14--was the most severe on record in the championship. Three nights later, when Frank Taberski lost to him, Greenleaf was assured of a tie. His closest match was against young George Kelly of Philadelphia, nephew of Playwright George Kelly who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925. Greenleaf's victory --126 to 119--gave him the championship prize of $1,200, in addition to his salary of $6,000 for three weeks' play, and one-sixth of the gate receipts.

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