By Elliott West
“I kept trying and eventually it came to me”.
Herbert Beetham
Introduction
When one thinks of a gentleman, one such player that comes to mind, is the late Herbert Beetham. Beetham, who was the 1961 world amateur billiards champion, was someone who epitomised all that was finest in the amateur game, impeccable in his courtesy, sportsmanship and dress. A player who was tidy, methodical and matter-of-fact and who had a unique way of taking his chalk from his left waistcoat pocket rather than the right.
Herbert had a large number of friends and was a man whose feet were firmly planted in the grassroots of the amateur game. He was keen and competitive and had his own billiard room at the bottom of his garden and was meticulous in recording in recording all his games and session averages. A player who in the last years of his life, making a 300 break just after his 80th birthday.
Career
Herbert Beetham first reached the final of the English Amateur Championship in 1936, making a record break under the new 15 hazard limit of 266. However he missed a long in-off, three minutes from time, which cost him the title. Joe Thompson defeated by a mere 30 points. A mistake which kept him in the wilderness for the title until 1960.
Herbert had so many disappointments in his career but these shortfalls made him the great player that he became. Beetham personified persistence and tenacity, never giving up when the chips were down. In the first post-war championship final, he lost to Mendel Showman, a Manchester left-hander who coped better with a table so extraordinary fast. In 1948, he led Joe Thompson, the eventual winner, by 347 going into the last session of their quarter-final only to lose by 122.
Beetham became one of the three pillars of English amateur billiards, Frank Edwards and Leslie Driffield being the other two. Edward’s had his period of ascendency between 1949-1951 and was also champion in 1955 and 1956. Driffield was champion between 1952-1954 and 1957-1959.
Driffield beat Beetham by a mere 101 in their three-day final of 1952 and in their 1958 semi-final by only 128 but thrashed him in their 1959 final after Beetham had made his highest competitive break, 481 unfinished, in an earlier round.
In 1960, the hazard limit was temporarily increased from 15 to 25 thus enabling Herbert to play to his strengths. It also favoured Leslie Driffield but he lost unexpectedly to Reg Wright in the semi-finals and so opened the path to victory for Leslie Beetham. He went on to comfortably beat Reg Wright in the final. Ironically, he only averaged 21, a score that left him on the losing side on a number of occasions.
This win gave Herbert a place in the 1960 in the World Amateur Championships in Edinburgh. By playing a consistent game, Beetham motored, driving his opponents to distraction with his solidity on the red ball and resulted in him being undefeated.
He also retained the English title in 1961, beating his nemesis, Reg Wright by 2017 in the final and regained it in 1962 by beating Norman Dagley in the penultimate session, making breaks of 314 and 311.
With the closure of Burroughs Hall, the amateur championship lost its distinctive character. No future venue was able to recapture this ‘womb-like little amphitheatre’. By the mid-sixties, Beetham’s game had started to decline but he was still able to beat the best when he had to. An example being in 1977, when Norman Dagley looked unbeatable, Beetham beat him in the quarter-finals. However he ran out of steam in the final, losing to Bob Close.
Summary
Herbert’s love of the game never diminished and he religiously attended every English Amateur final and no billiards gathering was complete without his presence. A fine billiards player, Beetham was widely respected in the game and was clearly a major player in the sport in the post-war years. Herbert passed away in April, 1992 in Derby after a battle with cancer. His loss sent shudders through the corridors of cue sports.
