Chris Holland,
a member of the Shirley Warren (Warren Social A) team for 48 years has been a fine example to the Club and snooker fraternity in the Southampton District.
Currently Manager for the Castle Club, Chris has won numerous trophies throughout his career, and no less than 15 Southampton Individual Snooker Championships held by the Social Clubs League.
His understanding of the green baize, cloth, cushions, ball contacts, effects of the nap, tactics and strategy are second to none. Break building over the years has rewarded Chris with 100 breaks in both billiards and snooker, and he remarked to me one day, that "you only get out of the game, what you put in".......... so, Chris's motto might be " practice makes perfect"...........
OFFICIALLY he has been
playing in the Southampton & District Social Clubs’ snooker league for 49
seasons.
But
Chris Holland, who scored the league’s first ever century and won the Town
Championship a record 13 times, has been hiding a dark secret for nearly half a
century.
He
played illegally at the age of 17.
“I
was seconded into a pairs’ match at Workmen No 1 in Lime Street,” revealed
Holland, now 66. “They were a player short and they dragged me out of Shirley
snooker hall.”
The
league’s games secretary Andy Brooke laughed and said: “I will dig out the
1958/59 result cards and send him a fine.”
Holland
joined Division 3 Warren Social Club, aged 18, and played for the team for 48
years under Dave O’Brien, who is now league president.
“I
said I’d always play up there as long as he was captain, and he was captain
when we finished,” said Holland, who won the town pairs’ title seven times
with O’Brien.
In
1962 he won his first Town Championship trophy and 40 years later at the age of
60 he claimed a 13th title. Holland does not rule out another.
He
chalked up the league’s first century, 108, on March 17, 1980, at Warren
Social against Tony Newton from the Atherley Bowling Club
Without
thinking, he tried to force the frame-ball pink in the first frame to get onto
the black, and missed.
“Tony
took pink and black to win the frame by one point, which annoyed me greatly,”
said Holland. “In the next frame I took 15 reds and colours and snookered
myself on the yellow.”
In
fact, Newton was the only other player to record a ton before the Millennium.
Born
in Howards Grove, Holland has lived all his life in Shirley, Millbrook, Shirley
Warren and Freemantle. He attended King Edward VI School in Hill Lane and
started playing snooker on a small table, aged 14.
He
recently celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary with wife Angela, who reached
the women’s world championship semi-finals in the early 1980s at the
Craneswater SC in Portsmouth.
They
have two daughters Caroline and Nicola, whose 21-month-old baby Keiran made
headline news around the world in 1998 after his fall from a third-floor window
of a block of flats was broken by the arms of a policeman.
A
wood turner by trade, Holland later ran a DIY shop and, before he was married,
spent 40 hours a week at work and 40 hours playing snooker.
“I
was a bit of a hustler in those days. I never came out of a points’ school
losing money because I always played a little bit in hand. The year I made the
108 my income took a sharp dive,” he laughed.
Holland
was captain of the Southampton side that played in the inter-town competition
across the South and especially enjoyed the trips to the Isle of Wight.
“We
used to all meet at the Castle (Club) about 11 in the morning and have a few
drinks. We’d get on the ferry and play cards, we’d play snooker all
afternoon and early evening and then we used to get the ferry back and end up at
the Castle again.
“That
was a really good day.”
When
Warren pulled out of the league last season Holland, who is part-time secretary
there, was asked to play number one for Premier side Shirley Social A.
He
practises for five hours a week but insists “I don’t practise enough”.
“I
always commit myself to accepting the fact that I could lose. It never used to
faze me too much if I had to take a ball on.
“It’s
a matter of recognising the crucial ball in a game and that’s probably what I
was strongest at.
And
how long can he continue?
“It
depends if there’s a life after this because I’m sure my cue will end up in
my box.”
The
day Steve Davis got uptight on my living room carpet
A YOUNG Steve Davis was a
frequent house-guest of Chris Holland who is celebrating his 50th season playing
in the Southampton social clubs’ snooker league.
Needing
somewhere to stay while playing in an under-21 tournament in Portsmouth, the
future six-time world champion made the first of many visits to the Holland
household to sample Chris’ wife Angela’s bacon and sausage sandwiches.
Holland
recalled: “He pulled up in an Austin Maxi and the front wing was rusty. The
next car he had out there was a Porsche and the one after that was the extended
Cadillac.
“We
had a Commodore 64, one of the early computers, for the girls, and he used to
lie on the carpet with them playing games. He used to get really uptight because
he couldn’t beat them.”
Holland
still sends a Christmas card every year to Davis’ parents Bill and Jean.
He
recalls sharing a pot of coffee and sandwiches with Patsy Houlihan, who Jimmy
White once described as “the greatest player I’ve ever seen”. The late
John Spencer was another to chew the fat in Holland’s living room.
During
his 22 years working at the Castle Club, which closed last year, Holland
remembers cooking a jacket potato for Ray Reardon and beating Alex
‘Hurricane’ Higgins in a money match.
“He
gave me 28 (points start) best-of-three for a fiver and I done him 2-0.”
Holland
described John Pulman, world champion during most of the 1960s, as a “sociable
animal” who was great at telling stories and entertaining the crowd.
“I’ve
seen him at the Castle and someone’s said to him ‘get you a drink John?’
“He’s
looked up and down the bar and seen who was there and he used to say ‘I’ll
do this round’.
“He
knew full well that he’d got them all there until they’ve all bought a round
back.”