30 for 30: Jeannette Lee

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Yup.

As soon as I saw the thread title I knew who it was; that's pretty impressive for a female pool player who really hasn't been culturally relevant for about 20 years now.

I always felt like Allison Fisher was the better player but man - Jeannette Lee was stunning.

Allison Fisher and Karen Corr were probably the two best women's pool players in history, certainly in the last 50 years, and you could learn everything from perfect mechanics to elite level strategy from both of them; they were as consistent and efficient as terminator robots. Allison was the most dominant pool player in history, iirc.

But Jeanette played the game a little differently than most of the other top women's players. She was an incredible shot-maker, so while she sometimes wasn't as consistent as Allison or Karen, she could pull off some shots that made up the difference. And she flashed a brilliance at the game that most of the others just didn't. She would get into the zone, and then lean into that, which allowed her to make some crazy Efren-like shots, and helped her win in some fantastic ways. She was kind of the Brett Favre/(insert wildly talented football player here) of pool.

And it was that out-of-the-box style that, imo, gave her a slight edge over Allison/Karen when Jeanette was in her prime years. She was just about the only player that consistently gave either Allison or Karen serious competition at that time.

Plus, she was Korean, and as a Korean growing up at that time, it was pretty amazing to see one of your own not only on TV playing at a high level, but winning and being one of the three best players in the world. I can't really describe what's that was like, but it was mind-expanding for me. Probably for a lot of 2nd-gen Koreans.

I have no doubt that if her health had not been a factor, she would've been an even more prolific winner, but in her short prime, she was as dominant as any player I ever watched, in the mens or womens game.

And yeah, she was hot. That didn't hurt at all.

And when I met her, she was very gracious, friendly, even asked about myself, and told me a short story about when she was in STL. But when she stepped to the table, the Black Widow appeared. That look in the pic in the OP just dropped over her face, and i remember kind of thinking, "I'm standing ten feet from a stone-cold assassin."