Joshua Hornbeck had been playing pool for 20 years.  He grew up in a family that celebrated – and lived – off the sport. “I got all three of my brothers who play pool. My dad.  My dad’s dad. It was a big thing in our family.  You know it’s big when you don’t even know what pool is, but you got an eight-foot pool table in the dining room…that’s how dad made our lunch money.” But, after two decades of playing pool, Joshua still hit balls too hard, used too much spin, and lacked certain ball control skills. His playing was decent, but nothing that could enable him to win his father’s pool memorial tournament and a prize upwards of $6800.

That is, until Joshua was selected to participate on Tor Lowry’s billiards web series, 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment. For two straight weeks, eight hours a day, Tor, a managing member of Zero-X Billiards and the creator of the “Secrets of Pool” instructional video series, worked diligently with Joshua on his pool game at his home in Owl City, Pennsylvania, while the cameras rolled and recorded everything.  During those 112 total hours, Joshua’s game was surgically diagnosed and he was then given a prescription of improvements, ranging from stroke drills (“1200 times in 2 days”) and center-ball positioning to half-table pattern play and kicking and breaking.

For all this instruction, Joshua did not pay Tor a cent.  That is not to say, however, that Joshua did not undertake a serious financial commitment.  As Joshua shared, his family “lives paycheck to paycheck,” so taking two weeks off from work was an enormous burden.  His wife, Lisa, added, “He’s taken a lot of time off from work, but I’m supporting him.  We saved for it. It’s an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I’m just behind him all the way.”

The improvement, documented over the course of an 80-minute web episode (shown above), is extraordinary.  Joshua shares at the end that he “felt like he had hit the lottery.”  And, with true “pay it forward” spirit (one of the tenets of 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment), Joshua is now training local youth by teaching them the same transformative billiards techniques Tor taught him.

Joshua is not an anomaly.  There have been other participants in Las Vegas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Texas.  A number of their stories are viewable on YouTube.  Many more will be posted soon. Their stories and skill levels vary widely, though the people Tor accepts all share the same DNA of being passionate, driven, and motivated.   They range from league players to young children, from widows to wounded warriors (including an Iraqi War veteran who lost his arm and plays with a strap).

If this is all starting to sound like an episode of the reality show Restaurant: Impossible or Extreme Weight Loss, that’s not a coincidence.  In fact, Tor says those kinds of shows were the inspiration for 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment.   Tor, who played pool for a living in the 1990s (and had received professional training from pool legends such as Dallas West, Hal Mix, and Jerry Briesath), had been watching these kind of reality shows and started to wonder if someone could significantly improve their pool game in just 14 days.  “It was an experiment.  I didn’t know if I could do it or not,” said Tor.  That was the genesis of 14 Days. 

Since March of this year, more than 1000 people have applied to participate on 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment.  Tor’s goal is to teach up to five people a month (sometimes several people on the same table, as was the case in Indiana) through June of 2014. Tor confided the travel and pace can be difficult, especially since he does all the teaching as well as the editing and production work.   And the work is certainly not all altruistic.  As Tor shared, “Every time I put out an episode, I get more interest in my videos and DVDs.  It drives sales.  I break even.”

But, watching the show and talking at length with Tor, it’s apparent that 14 Days is not about getting rich, even if the show ultimately lands a separate sponsor.  The show’s mission is to “make the game of pool easy for everyone.”  Even broader, Tor wants to spread his love of the game. “I want to broaden the appeal of pool…Pool isn’t really dying as a sport, in fact, it’s more popular than ever. Pool simply has changed.  It’s a different audience.  It’s not all about the seedy side.  With 14 Days – The Great Pool Experiment, I hope to demonstrate how a unified pool community is necessary.”