Shhhhh! Shuffleboard championship at stake

ZEPHYRHILLS - The first thing you have to know about shuffleboard, at least as it is practiced here in the States, is the galleries are unflaggingly sedate.

Never mind that the first International Shuffleboard Association World Singles Tournament is unfolding through Sunday at a pavilion in the heart of Betmar Acres' 27-hole golf course. Almost nobody ever yells, "You da man!" when a competitor shuffles (slides? shoots?) his disk.

And despite the occasional display of headgear expressing enthusiasm for one college football team or another, you never hear, as you might on a Saturday afternoon inside a Southeastern Conference stadium, "Knock him in the cheap seats, Aparecido!"

This may be because the competitors seem preternaturally self-restrained. Tempted though they might be, nobody - not even veteran golfer Earl Ball, the A-Rod of shuffleboard's answer to the New York Yankees - shouts, "Bite!" or, "Be right!" or even, "Get legs, Louie!" however appropriate these common golf exhortations would be on a shuffleboard court.

Perhaps the reason is as framed by Ken Offenther, the No. 4-ranked American male player: "You can't talk to 'em." Of course, talk never persuaded a Titleist to "Go in the hole!" but does that stop a gallery from cheering just that whenever Camilo Villegas launches a wedge from 140 yards?

Most serious shufflers describe the sport as two games in one, neither of them known for emotional outbursts or raucous crowds. Although the second varies from player to player (pool, billiards, croquet) the first is, invariably, chess. Maybe, but even chess features more trash talk than shuffleboard.

The great Gary Kasparov was always shooting his mouth off. Remember the climactic line from "Searching for Bobby Fischer"? Young master Josh Waitzkin rises to offer his opponent a draw in the national finals, saying: "You've lost. You just don't know it yet."

Although legend has it that Ben Hogan could go 36 holes on a U.S. Open Sunday afternoon without uttering so much as a "You're away," world-class shufflers pride themselves in amiable sportsmanship. Overheard more than a dozen times over the first two days of competition: "Nice shot."

Mistaken identity

The whole affair is so absent human vocalization, you might mistake it for a college physics lab. And why not, for what is shuffleboard if not the studious application of Newton's laws of motion?

"It's all about mathematics and physics," says Ball, ISA president and Betmar Shuffleboard Club's top player, which, as any shuffler worth his/her personalized cue knows, pretty much makes him the Tiger Woods of the 39-foot court. "It helps to have a background in engineering," Ball adds, and he does, having managed assorted foreign factories for General Motors before his retirement a dozen years ago.

"Earl loves the competition," says Vivian Ball, his wife of 27 years. Never mind that when they settled at Betmar Acres, it was to keep an eye on her parents and to play golf. Says Mrs. Ball, "He hated the thought of shuffleboard."

But when he succumbed to the persistence of his father-in-law, and together they won a doubles tournament, he was hooked.

"It's like being a kid again, like sticks and rocks, balls and bats," Earl says. "In golf, you can't go up to your opponent's short putt and knock his ball away. They won't invite you back. But in shuffleboard, that's what you do. That's what you're supposed to do."

Recruiting more players

Now the Balls travel internationally in the interest of spreading the game, spreading seeds that most recently have taken root in Scandinavia. "When we're inaugurating, I do the demonstrating," Mrs. Ball says, cutting her gaze toward the world's inscrutable No. 1. "I don't overcomplicate things."

Here's how that's working out: While shuffleboard remains a game dominated by older contestants, teams from Germany and Brazil are remarkable for the youth of some of their members.

Torben Hussmann is 14, a ninth-grader back home in Langenselbold and a defenseman on his soccer team. "It's a game for the whole family," he says, nobly withholding the fact that in his family, he routinely beats his dad, Dieter Hussmann, a banker, president of the German Shuffleboard Association and ranked No. 3, behind his son, nationally.

Daiane de Jesus may yet be the Danica Patrick of shuffleboard, an eye-catching 21-year-old employee of a Rio de Janeiro aesthetic clinic - "A beauty salon," explains Brazilian captain Michael Zellner - who studies her shots like Tiger Woods crouching over a putt. Says de Jesus in halting English, "It is a well-balanced game, emotional and physical."

Don't think the retirees who dominate shuffleboard in Zephyrhills, readily acknowledged as the game's Mecca, aren't paying attention. Even as the tournament clatters toward Sunday's finals, locals are plotting ways to introduce youngsters to their happy addiction.

Call it a whispering campaign.