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| This interview with Diana Minor took place in mid June 2000, following the BCA 9-Ball Championships in Las Vegas. | |||
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Diana: Professionally I have been playing probably since the early 90s. But I've only been out on the tour twice full time. I believe back in 93 I played for almost 1 year and at that time I was ranked in the top 20. Then I quit playing regularly until 2 years ago. I guess I have been playing for the last 2 years full time. My rank is back up in the top 20. I've been seeded a couple times. But during the time away, I have gone out and played in 2 or 3 tournaments here or there just to keep my points going so that way I don't have to go through the qualifying system that the girls have to go through. Its tough nowadays. You drop out for a couple of years and you need to go and requalify. They have an entirely new setup in the way that they do that. You can't just sit out for half the year and then jump back in and play and that is kind of what I was doing. Now you have to meet a certain percentile of play. You have to play in a certain amount of events per year. AZB: What is your greatest accomplishment as a player? Diana: Well, I've been inducted into the VNEA International Hall of Fame. I was selected out of 70,000 members at that time. I believe their membership is over 85,000 now. And I have also been inducted into the Indiana IAMOA VNEA State Hall of Fame. Those are two of my greatest accomplishments. AZB: Do you know how they go about choosing people for the VNEA hall of fame? Diana: They have a magazine called the News and Views and readers submit names throughout the 70,000 members and that is how I was chosen. It was a real surprise to me. I live out in the country and the mailman drives up to my door and he honks so I run out there and he has a certified letter for me. I open it up and it says I have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. I had no idea. I thought that was pretty cool. AZB: What originally made you decide you wanted to be a professional pool player? Diana: Honestly, up to today, I have no idea what I want to be in life. I am 42 years old now and if you asked me what I was going to be in life when I was a child, I probably would have told you I was going to grow up, get married and have lots of babies. I sat and played with baby dolls and I never played any sports whatsoever. When I married my husband, he told me I had a lot of potential and should go out and at least try. To this day, I don't really know if that is my calling in life. I do it because I play well. I may not even play for 4-6 months and then I can go and play like I have been playing for the last year. I have a god-gifted talent although I do need to school myself a little bit more. I need to get into it and do a little more reading and learn why things happen the way they happen when you shoot balls. I don't know if I really need a teacher or not. My husband plays very well. So I have a built in teacher right here. It is just that I don't make a very good student because I have a lot of natural talent. AZB: Would you consider your husband as having had the greatest influence on your game? Diana: Yeah, I would think so. He is the person that gives me the push. He never says anything if I just want to jump on a plane and go. Or if I just want to drive down the street and play a tournament, he is very accommodating with that. He is always encouraging me. I think he would rather me play pool than work. AZB: You have a very interesting sponsor. Can you tell us about that? Diana: Well, I have two sponsors. I have Mottier Amusements that is a local amusement company here in Columbus Indiana. They are very good to me. And in return, though I don't really have to do anything in return for them, my husband and I direct a local VNEA league here in Columbus Indiana. In our first season last year, we had almost 100 members. I do that in return for the sponsorship even though they don't ask anything of me. I am sure you are talking about my other sponsor, Aerosmith. Joe Perry of Aerosmith is my brother in law and Billie is my sister. I had never asked them for sponsorship but that was just something they decided to do on their own. One day I went to the mailbox and there was a check in there. It wasn't like I was out scouting for anyone or anything. I was just really lucky that Duane Mottier decided to do something with me. And then then the next thing I know, my sister is wanting to sponsor me also. I guess things just start to roll. I have no real commitments to either one. They don't expect that I have to be a #5 player or anything like that. They just want me to go out and enjoy myself and do the best I can do while I am out there. AZB: When you look over a list of sponsors for the male and female players, they are always companies from the billiards industry, do you think we are going to see more sponsorship from outside of the billiards industry? Diana: Well, I hope that when people go into my website, they see that I am being sponsored by someone outside the pool industry and maybe that will encourage other companies to look at some of the female players and maybe choose to sponsor a player or maybe even sponsor the whole tour if they want. I think what has happened is that it is so expensive to play out there on the tour, you have to finish like 9th through 12th just to break even on the women's tour. It is a shame that you can be ranked in the top 20 in the world but you can't even come close to making a living at it unless you do endorsements and shows and have sponsorship. You make more of your money from the outside than you do from the tournaments. Even though Allison Fisher is a gifted person when it comes to the game and probably wins 95% of the tournaments she plays in, she is going to make a living at it with or without endorsements or sponsorship because she is almost guaranteed to cash very high every event. She is going to make a good living, but she is in that elite group and she is one or two of a kind. AZB: You mentioned your website, what is the address of your website? Diana: My website is at http://www.poolcues.net/dminor AZB: I read on your site that you practice with Jeanette Lee sometimes. What is that like? Diana: We used to practice pretty regularly but she is so busy and our schedules were conflicting. We were trying to find any time that we could practice together and we just gave up on that. But, since she has had her back surgery, we are talking about starting up a practice routine again. It is always good to play other females. Being in our area of Indiana, unless Jeanette or I travel, we don't really have anyone to play unless we play the men. We don't have the chance to play in something like Candi Rego's tour in the east, or go out west and play in the California tour or the Hunter Tour down in Texas. We are in a great state as far as pool ability goes. The level of play here is just tremendous. We have a lot of very gifted players here. But you still have to be used to playing women and be comfortable with that. I know if I go to a tournament, I am usually the only woman there. I am playing all men and your game is entirely different playing men because you don't have anything to prove or anything to lose while they have everything to lose. You have that little extra edge so you play them differently. You play a little looser and go for things you might not normally try but when you go out and play the women's tour, it is an entirely different world. You are on the 9' tables instead of the 7' tables that everyone plays on around here. You are on the bigger tables and you are playing women and women play entirely different. The patterns are different. That is what makes players like Jeanette and Allison and Gerda in the elite group. They play the more manly patterns while the lesser ranked players like myself might play more percentages and might not go for as many shots. While I like playing against Allison or Gerda or Jeannette because I like the choice of patterns they make, it is really best to play in your local pool hall so you get a chance to play all different sorts of people and all different styles of play. AZB: Do you pal around with Jeannette or any of the other players on the tour? Diana: I'm pretty much a loner but Jeannette and I might go out and pal around here in the city. We might go shopping or might go to lunch or dinner. When I was going up to her place regularly, we would play basketball out in the yard or go for walks. When I am at a tournament though, I room with Kathy MacDonald or Jeanette. They are the only two people that I room with. Kathy doesn't play the tour that regularly so I usually either room with Jeanette or by myself. While I am not an unfriendly person, I don't really need the comfort of being around other people either. I realize that I am there for a reason. A lot of people say that it must be great to be able to travel around on the tour but it is really not the way a lot people think that it is. You jump on a plane at 4 in the morning, you travel all day and then you go in for the mandatory players meeting. You sit through that and then you might sit and watch part of the pro-am or compete in that. You go back to your room and go to bed and then you make up the next day and start playing. Then you play Friday and Saturday and maybe Sunday if you are fortunate enough to play in the finals. Then you jump on a plane Sunday night or Monday and come straight home. So, even though I might rent a car at the tournament location, I really don't go out and see the sights. I know a lot of the girls do, but I just don't. I would rather go back to the room and read a book or watch a movie or maybe even go and watch the matches. I like to watch the top players play. I think it helps me to focus myself when I watch them. I really don't watch what they are doing as much as I watch the balls roll around on the table. I don't try to copy their styles or anything. AZB: You seem to show very little emotion during your matches. Is this something you do intentionally? Diana: You know, it is funny because I have always been that way. I've had a lot of people say that to me. They tell me that I look like I am going to fold socks in the laundry room or I am going to do dishes. At times I feel like I have zero focus so I don't even see how I could look like that. AZB: Do you think the future of the game, men and women, depends on TV exposure? Diana: Yes, and I have mentioned it to the WPBA before that they need to let people know on television that there are more than just 4 or 5 or 6 players out there. I always hear from the local fans that they always see the same players on TV over and over. They only televise the final 3 or final 4 matches. Usually, those matches are the same people over and over. So the casual fan gets confused as to whether this is an old tournament or a new tournament. If they see the same people in the finals every time, they get a little confused. I made a suggestion that they should do it the way they do pro golf where they go down and interview some of the other players. It doesn't matter whether the player is ranked 150th on the tour, they still put a picture of the player on the TV and then they do a little interview and the fans get the chance to learn something about that player. It lets the fans know that there are more players out there than just that elite group at the top. I think the WPBA is thinking about doing this with the top 16 players or so. I think if they could get those faces out there and get them some exposure, it would really help. AZB: There has been a bit of talk on the net lately about the old subject of men playing women. Do you think the professional female players of today can compete with the top men? Diana: This is a subject that has been debated a lot in the last few years. I personally believe that we are not there yet. I do believe that with Allison and Jeanette and players of that calibre, we now have a better blueprint to follow. Believe me, the gap between the men and the women is narrowing. AZB: Last question, what advice would you give a young player trying to get out there and make it on the tour? Diana: I think they should accomplish a stellar amateur background and play all the professional qualifiers possible. This will give them experience with the cost and time invested and an oppurtunity to play against stiffer competition.
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