Athlete Profile

Karen Corr—Women’s Professional Billiard Association 

Since the age of 14 Karen Corr has felt the most comfortable when she has a cue stick in her hand. She started playing snooker, a cuestick sport with a slight resemblance to pocket billiards, in her native Ireland and her talents soon became obvious.

The day after her 21st birthday Corr won the World Snooker Championship and made enough money to begin playing full-time, abandoning the series of odd jobs she had been working to pay her bills.

She was the top-ranked snooker player in the world for five years and also won two English Billiards championships but Corr quickly saw that if she wanted to make a living in cue sports then her future would be in America.

“Things with women’s snooker went downhill as far as prize money,” Corr recalled. “It took me awhile to decide to come over but I decided to do it for a couple of months to see what it was like and I’ve been here ever since.”

Corr was following in the footsteps of Allison Fisher, her chief rival on the snooker circuit, who emigrated to the United States and quickly found success playing nine-ball on the WPBA tour.

“She certainly kept that quiet,” Corr said with a chuckle. “Rightly so. I didn’t know much about nine-ball pool and certainly didn’t know much about America but hearing what we did about Allison was an incentive for having a go at it. Anyway you can always go back to snooker.”

In 1998 Corr came to America with close friend and fellow competitor Julie Kelly and began playing in regional events. In 1999 she qualified for the WPBA Tour and was named Rookie of the Year. In 2000 she won three events on tour and another in Japan and finished the season ranked second in the world behind her old rival Fisher.

Not that it’s always been easy. Besides adjusting to a new culture Corr had to learn a new game. Nine-ball is like snooker in that it is played on a felt table and the idea is to put balls in pockets. There the resemblance ends.

“With only nine balls on the table there are a lot of things that come up,” Corr said. “Every rack’s completely different. When you break the balls go in a different spot. You never say ‘Oh I’ve had this run before. It’s never repetitive in that sense.”

Corr and her fellow professionals must be as fit as any other group of athletes. It’s not unusual to put in 12-hour days in the poolroom during a tournament. Corr practices four or five hours a day when she’s not competing, either with Kelly or with Pete Fusco, who operates a recreation center near Corr’s home just outside Philadelphia. As a change of pace she’ll spend time on her bike or in the pool at a nearby gym.

“We don’t run 100 meters in under 10 seconds,” Corr said. “We leave that to the runners but we have a very busy schedule. I believe if you're a lot fitter and your stamina’s a lot better your mental side is stronger. You know you’ll be able to hold up. You get so drained when you have tournament after tournament after tournament. It can take its toll so I think the fitter you are the more mentally and physically able you are to go out there and perform at your best.

Now 31, Corr has established herself as one of the best cue sport practitioners in the world but she knows she must continually prove herself. The talent pool on tour is deeper than ever and she knows any of the 47 other players in the field each week can send her to the sidelines. “You’ve got a tough opponent all the way through,” she said. “They’re all hungry and they’re all capable of winning.”

And of course, there is Fisher with whom she has battled on both sides of the Atlantic in a rivalry should remain as competitive as ever.

“Myself and Allison have always been competitive,” Corr said. “We kind of started a new game two or three years behind her. It would be very satisfying to catch her. So we'll just keep working toward that goal."