Not Just a Ball-Buster
There's more to Charles "Hillbilly" Bryant than the backwoods accent and Li'l Abner physique. The former hothead is serious about his game, faith and playing nice.
Story by Mike Geffner
Article from Billiard Digest 2005
Charles "Hillbilly" Bryant was raised in a one-traffic-light town in the foothills of North Carolina, just outside of Hickory, in the land of grits, stock car racing, wild-hog hunting, and guys spitting tobacco juice. His grandfathers brewed moonshine. His father trained cockfighters. And while Bryant maintains he didn't grow up like "the Beverly Hillbillies, living in a shack and walking around barefoot up in the mountains," he admits, with a Southern accent as thick as swamp mud, which turns yellow into yaller, that he's just a couple of generations removed from that.
But far from being the least bit self-conscious about his humble backwoods roots, Bryant has proudly adopted the whole good ol' boy thing as his bigger-than-life pool persona, right down to his twangy third-person declaration of "Hillbilly on the hill!" when he needs one more game to win a set. It's become his trademark rallying cry.
In just three solid years on the pro circuit, after spending most of his career not playing any "real" tournaments or trekking beyond his little piece of down-home turf, the 36-year-old Hillbilly has built one of the more colorful, if not notorious, reputations - and not simply for playing pool. Aside from knocking off champions in the relatively few major events he's played and possessing a break so powerful he's occasionally cracked cue balls, he's known for wearing some of the loudest shirts you'll ever see and for snapping a guy's elbow in an arm wrestling match at the 2004 Derby City Classic.
Bryant's temperament has softened,
but he still knows when to play the
intimidator.(Photo by John Nation)
He'll often dismiss himself, with that aw-shucks charm, as "just a big ol' country boy." Indeed, at 5-foot-11, 220 pounds, he's built like a brick wall, broad-shouldered to the max and with muscled forearms seemingly as wide as Johnny Archer's thighs, exuding the hulking, menacing vibe of "a guy who might beat you up after you beat him in a match," observes Charlie Williams. That off-putting aura is further fueled by Bryant's hot-tempered past, during which he at times would snap at his opponents, or even guys on the sidelines, either by cursing a blue streak or putting a hurtin' on someone. "I used to get into a lot of fights back home," he says. "I didn't take crap from anybody. Once, when I was playing Tony Watson, his brother was egging me on, and I ended up slamming his head into a poker machine." There were other times, though, when Hillbilly, after making unforced errors, would simply turn the anger on himself. "My emotions used to overpower me, and my game would go straight downhill," he says. "It's something I continue to work on. I don't want to be that way. It's been a battle, but I've gotten a lot better at controlling it. What's really helped me is a saying I came up with. When I feel my temper coming on, I either think to myself or say aloud, 'Face Fear - Feel Anger, Control Emotions; Focus Energy At Results.'"
While some players fear him for a variety of reasons, from his break to his imposing presence, Bryant swears he's not afraid of a living soul, either off the table or on. It's the way his father raised him. "And them boys know it," he says without a hint of reservation. "I know I play as well as anybody. And I know my time's coming. My game, my fundamentals, are as solid as anyone out there, and I know, especially with my break, I intimidate guys. A lot of players have a little bit more finesse than I do sometimes, because they've been out there longer, but I make up for it with all my power. I'm already a force to be reckoned with. If I get up there and play like I'm supposed to, they can't win."
So cocksure of himself, he was heard muttering to himself after a loss to Archer at the 2004 Big Apple 9-Ball Challenge, in which Bryant placed an impressive fifth by defeating, among others, Mika Immonen and Max Eberle: "Man, I should've tortured him." Should've tortured the greatest 9-ball player of his generation? Wow! Now, that's confidence. "No disrespect to Johnny, he's a great player," Hillbilly explains to me later, "but I just fell dead on him, stone-cold dead, made too many silly mistakes. It's not nervousness. It's just me being too hard on myself. The toughest person on me is…me. I sometimes analyze too much. I don't get up there and just let it happen. That's hurt me a lot. Once I get rid of that, there ain't no tellin' what I might do."
For players outside of the South and Southwest, Bryant, who is given to wearing exotically designed red-and-black silk shirts, has magically popped up out of nowhere. "There are a lot of pro players out there who still don't know my game," he says. But around Houston, where he's lived for the last five years, he's anything but unknown. He's been a holy Hillbilly terror, in fact. Playing in Texas' biggest events, he's twice snapped off three consecutive tournaments, and in April 2004 won the Houston Open for the second time, beating no less a champion than Jeremy Jones in the finals. In fact, he and Jones are the only ones to ever win that event twice.
"He's aggressive, powerful, just a solid all-around player," says Double J, who knows Hillbilly's game better than almost anyone. "For a while, to be honest, I couldn't beat him. He really had my number. Beat me something like five times in a row. Once he gets a little more seasoning in these big events, he's going to be tough to deal with, for sure. The guys who don't know him are learning that they can't expect Hillbilly to give away games. You have to tear it away from him." He pauses before adding "And, man, that break. He breaks 'em hard. Sounds like something between a gunshot and a car crash. He breaks 'em well even when he has to break from the box in the middle of the table. He has perfect timing and a strong snap like [Francisco] Bustamante. When you're playing Hillbilly, you can't help but always have that break in the back of your mind. You know at some point during the match it's going to come into play."
Etched fittingly across his massive back, Bryant has a tattoo of the cartoon character Yosemite Sam holding a cue stick and shooting a 9 ball out of a cannon. "Actually, when I was younger, I went by my middle name of Shannon, and, because of my break, people called me 'Shannon the Cannon.' But because Shannon Daulton was out there first with that nickname, I had to give it up." His break, which sometimes springs the cue ball up toward the lights, has been clocked at nearly 35 mph, and he once sank seven balls on a 9-ball break. "And would you believe I didn't get out?" he says. "I didn't make the 9, but got hooked behind it." At a recent tournament in Houston, he was even fined $20 for cracking two cue balls with the force of his break, and ultimately, a half-joking caution sign was posted by his table reading: "Speed Limit, 30 MPH." He claims he actually used to hit the balls harder, by around three mph, but in recent years has cut back on his stroke to gain more cue ball control. "Still, nearly every tournament, I make at least five balls on the break once or twice," he says. "It's all timing and technique. Believe it or not, I learned a lot about breaking from my dad's boxing technique. He was a good boxer when he was young, and we used to spar some. He showed me how me how to hit somebody and hit 'em hard, about rolling your shoulder with a snap. I've carried that over into breaking pool balls, and by now it comes naturally to me." Archer, arguably the greatest 9-ball breaker ever, says, "Hillbilly has a monster break. He hits the balls as hard or harder than anybody I've ever seen."
Bryant relied on his improving focus at
November's Glass City Open to snare
his first major tournament win.
(Photo by Diana Hoppe)
Says Shannon Daulton, who once hired Hillbilly to work in his poolroom in Somerset, Ky.: "Hillbilly could always break the balls hard, but he's controlling the cue ball so much better now. In fact, his whole game has sharpened up a lot in the last three years. Gone up between one or two balls. That's because he finally got out there and started playing in these big tournaments and facing better players. Give him a little time and you'll see him, for sure, being no less than in the Top 16."
By far, Hillbilly's all-around skills have been best displayed at the nine-day Derby City Classic, held annually in Louisville, Ky. Bryant has finished high in three different disciplines and within the top 20 in at least one leg for four straight years. In 2002, he placed 10th in the banks division; in 2003, he placed fifth in the one-pocket, beating along the way Immonen, David Matlock, Jimmy Wetch, and one-hole wizard Cliff Joyner. In 2004, he placed 10th in the one-pocket and 20th in the 9-ball, and this past January saw him claiming tied-for-fifth in one-pocket and tied-for-20th in 9-ball. But in 2004, Bryant drew the most buzz from his arm-wrestling prowess, winning a $500 bet and all but crippling his opponent. The rumor was, he broke the guy's arm. Not true - but also not far off. He actually jerked the guy's elbow out of the socket. It's only added to the Hillbilly Fear Factor. "The guy I beat was a pretty good-sized guy, too. He won some tough-man competitions," says Bryant, who once bench-pressed 440 pounds and squatted 680 himself. "The year before at Derby City, I put down like five people arm wrestling and won some decent money. So when the guy started woofing at people to arm-wrestle him, I stepped right up there and challenged him. It took me around three seconds to put him down, even though he got the jump on me. I knew something was wrong right away, because he just left his arm there on the table. Then he started hollerin', 'Somebody get me an ambulance.' I felt really bad for the guy, but I just walked away without saying a word. I didn't want to get into an argument or have any trouble. But I talked to him the next morning and apologized. He ended up walking around with his arm in a sling, and I'm told that he still wears a brace when he plays golf. It's nothing I'm proud of, believe me, and I've made up my mind that I'm not going to arm wrestle anymore. Because the same thing could've very easily have happened to me, and there goes my pool career."
Until he was 25, Hillbilly lived in the tiny North Carolina town of Icard, five minutes from Hickory and between Asheville and Charlotte. He played pool for the first time when he was 5, in a rundown building near his house that had three tables. "I shot standing on top of something Daddy made out of two old wooden Coke bottle crates, plywood, and the wheels from an old-time ringer washer," he says.
From ages 6 to 14, he shot in a "little bitty" poolroom - with three 9-footers and two bar tables - owned by his father in the next town over. When he wasn't playing, he was cleaning around the place or racking the balls for other players. And once, after his house burned down, he lived in the room for eight months, sleeping at night atop the slate of one of the tables.
His father, Charlie Sr., was known to his friends as Slick - and he was. "Daddy was a hustler, did a little bit of everything, anything to make a dollar," Hillbilly says. "He did some landscaping, sold watermelons and green beans, was a car salesman, booked football games. He ran a card game in the back of his poolroom. Sold sandwiches and bootleg beer out of there. But mostly, he trained roosters to be cockfighters. He probably was one of the best in the world at it. At any one time, we had somewhere between 1,000-2,000 roosters, and I was helping him from the time I was a little kid, waking up at four in the morning to feed them and give them water. Daddy kept me busy with those roosters. I never got to play as much as the other kids. And during the weekends, we traveled all around going to cockfighting derbies. I became known as Little Slick. Other than three states, cockfighting is illegal, and Daddy got busted three times. I never did - because every time the raids came, I ran like hell."
Slick was also a gambling pool player, and, according to Hillbilly, "was easily in the top 10 of the players within a 100-mile radius." His father was his first and only pool instructor; Slick taught his son how to play pool with tough love. "My dad was real hard on me," he says. "He'd make me do drill after drill, and if I did something I wasn't supposed to, I got scolded pretty good. He'd say, 'Boy, you know better than that. You better not do that crap anymore.' And if I did the same thing again, he'd slap me on the back of the head. It was kinda rough treatment, but that's one of the reasons why I have such good fundamentals." His father also instilled in him the killer mindset, the way he did his roosters. "He'd say over and over: 'Boy, always stand up for yourself. Never let anybody run over you.'"
By 10, Hillbilly could already run racks. A couple of years later, he beat the best player in Icard, who was more than twice his age. "Beat him out of $40," he says. "It was the talk of the town for a while." By the time he was old enough to drive, he began traveling around North Carolina a bit and gambling for bigger money. "I never had any serious stakehorses backing me, so I was always playing with my own money," he says. "I'd play $500 sets, $1,000 sets. And I busted a lot of road players who came through. Nobody had a true line on me, because I never really went anywhere and I never went to any big tournaments. Even though I played good and gambled a lot, I still viewed pool as a hobby. I also had an eight-year relationship with a girl from the time I was 17 who wanted me to have a real job, not go around playing pool. So, like my dad, I did a little bit of everything to make a dollar. I was a tree trimmer, I painted houses, I made furniture, I connected cable TVs. I never thought about being a professional pool player. Never followed the pro tour. I'd watch it on TV if I happened to catch it, and maybe I'd glance at a pool magazine if it was lying around the poolroom, but that was it. In fact, because I didn't have any way to compare myself with any top players, I didn't really know how good I was." He was all of 24 when he played with the local big boys for the first time.
Exotically-patterned shirts have become
Bryant's calling card. (Photo by Diana Hoppe)
Guys like Archer and the late Tony Ellin and Tony Watson and Michael Coltrain. The tournament was in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Archer ended up winning it, but Bryant, remarkably, came in fourth and even defeated Ellin. He finished fourth again a month later, then placed third twice in a row. And less than a year later, at a McDermott Tour event in Dublin, Ga., he did what he didn't know he could do: Shooting out of the gate with a seven-pack, he beat the great Archer. "By then," he says, "I knew I could play."
After he moved from Icard, he spent years jumping from one place to the other, from Oklahoma to Kentucky to Michigan to Florida, before settling in Houston and living on a sailboat. "I didn't have much money," he says. "It was the cheapest way to live."
With his life in order, Hillbilly pieced together his pool career like never before. And it all came together at the Glass City Open in November, when Bryant marched undefeated through the 97-player field, disposing of competitors such as Troy Frank, Keith McCready and Earl Strickland to take the hot-seat in a 10-4 win over scorching-hot Danny Basavich. Basavich clawed back to the final, where Bryant ousted him, 10-6.
"It's the biggest moment of my life," Bryant said at the time. "It's everything I've worked for. They say the first major one is the hardest - thank the good Lord."
Bryant can leverage that win for more success off the table. Already a well-liked, sought-after American Poolplayers Association teaching pro, he's working on a book, instructional videos, a variety of original pool inventions, and opening a pool school. "I've studied this game for a long time, and I think I have a lot to give back," he says. "I don't like to preach, but I'm a Christian, and firm believer that the Good Lord blessed me with whatever talent I have, and I want to pass on that gift by teaching others."
Bryant also has been fortunate with sponsorships. Quentin Anderson, an acquaintance and pool fan from San Antonio, Texas, sponsored Bryant as he hit the pro circuit hard from May to November 2004. Rob Lovelace of pooltourneys.com then became his tournament sponsor just before the Glass City Open. Texas cuemaker Jerry Olivier currently is his cue sponsor, and Tiger Products covers his equipment sponsorship.
All the pieces are in place for a big run in 2005, including the belief that he belongs in the upper echelon of pros. He's reminded of something Wade Crane told him a couple years ago. "He pulled me over and said, 'Hillbilly, when I was young, an old man sat me down. He looked me dead in the eye and told me that he thought I could be a world champion. He said that he had seen 'em all and there was no doubt in his mind that I could be one.
Says Bryant: "My emotions used
to overwhelm me, and my game
would go straight downhill."
(Photo by John Nation)
But … he said I would never be a champion until I truly believed that I really was a champion deep down. And, Hillbilly, I'm telling you the same thing, because you remind me so much of myself. I've seen you play and I believe you have all the skills to get there. You just have to realize that.' Well, I can't tell you how touched I was when he told me that. It brought a tear to this big ol' hard country boy. And as I play more and more in these big events, and beat them top players, I'm learning to believe that more and more."