There's no centralized billiards body, there are no formal international rankings. But Reyes is indeed the guy everybody in the game wants to beat. Many end up handing him wads of $100 bills. "There are just things he does on a pool table that are a little bit above everybody else," says Helfert. He can play angles and the rails. He can position the cue ball seemingly at will, he excels at the safety game—burying opponents behind balls to prevent a clean shot—and he takes, and often makes, shots others don't see or won't risk. After Houston, he won American tournaments in several different categories—nine ball, straight pool, rotation, one pocket, carom billiards—and two Southeast Asian Games gold medals in 1987. In 1995, he was Billiards Digest's Player of the Year. In 1997, he survived a three-day, $100,000 race to 120 in Hong Kong—billed "The Color of Money I"—against top American Earl Strickland, winning 120-117 and collecting $75,000 (less a $10,000 winner-to-loser payment he and Strickland agreed to before the match). A year earlier in Reno, Nevada, again facing Strickland, he had produced one of the most memorable shots on record. "Earl left him on the end rail totally tied up behind the nine ball," recalls Helfert, the tournament director. "It looked like there was no possible way for him to hit the object ball, which I think was the eight. Efren looked at it for a while, then he kicked the cue two rails back and forth across the table, hit the edge of the eight, made the eight, got position on the nine and ran out and won the match. It's by far the most amazing win I've ever seen. Very few players could have hit the ball."
Already a folk hero, Reyes became a legend at the 1999 World Championships in Cardiff, Wales. As is his custom, he showered before the tournament and not again until it was over—"so the luck won't wash off," he says—then beat players from England, Germany, Japan, fellow Filipino Francisco ("Django") Bustamante and, in the finals, Taiwan's Hao Ping-chang. Filipinos knew he was good, even great. But now he was world champion, and he was theirs.
At Nita's, Reyes spends about 20 minutes on the table before unscrewing his cue. He wipes his brow, then begins cataloging the aches and pains that are chipping away at his game. His eyes have gotten worse, he says. His elbows and shoulders hurt, and his belly makes it harder to stretch across the table. Everything has gotten worse since he quit smoking in 1997, he says. Some people in the Philippines say age has caught up with Reyes and robbed him of his magic touch. Reyes seems to agree. He thinks he'll play five more years, then retire, give lessons, make appearances or open his own hall. He knows other players are gaining on him, and that some may be, right now, better. He takes a shot, misses, and a grimace flashes across his face. "I know every angle," he says, "but sometimes I aim here"—he points to one side of the ball— "and I hit here," millimeters away. Puyat says Reyes "misses shots you'd never imagine his missing 10 years ago." Reyes shrugs, unmoved, but then, with rare emotion: "They can beat me now, but they can never achieve what I've achieved."
But just days before this catalogue of woes, Reyes was in Manila taking on Jeanette Lee, the most lucratively endorsed female in the game, nicknamed "The Black Widow" for her glamorous all-black outfits. The sellout crowd hooted and howled, thrilled to see both their hero and his striking challenger. The match started out close, but Reyes pulled away, winning nine of the last 10 games and the match, 13-5. After receiving his oversized check for $10,000 (Lee got $5,000), he was besieged by fans holding out T shirts, scraps of paper and pool cues for him to sign. Lee, downstairs at a reception, proclaimed: "He truly is the greatest player that ever lived."
