Love of the game

Fred Schmidt was taught to love the game of billiards growing up. When he was about five, his dad’s mechanic brought a billiards table to their St. Louis home and introduced him to the game.

“I thought it was the coolest thing,” Schmidt said.

The game got even cooler for him. Because his family owns AE Schmidt in St. Louis, which has sold and repaired billiards tables for more than 150 years, they knew professional players. Schmidt once played with Willie Mosconi, 15-time Billiard Congress of America champion. Though Schmidt was too young to recognize the significance of the match, he was hooked.

He began selling and repairing billiards tables in Columbia, first from his garage in 1986 and then at his own store. He started Schmidt Billiards and Game Rooms in 1993 at 2525 Bernadette Drive, and has sold nearly 3,000 tables in Columbia.

Besides selling billiards and game room products, Schmidt teaches the game to customers and other enthusiasts. He recently taught a course on billiards basics and strategies through the MU Career Center and plans to teach a similar course at his store in May.

Selling and teaching billiards was not the life Schmidt planned for himself.

He graduated from MU in 1978 with degrees in agriculture and forestry. He worked for three years as a landscaper in Little Rock, Ark., before taking a job as a subcontractor for a landscaping company in Columbia in 1981.

Juggling landscaping jobs and repairing billiards tables on the side became too much to handle, Schmidt said. He gave up landscaping for his first love — billiards.

Schmidt said he hopes to promote the sport as “a family game” and erase the stereotype of pool players as hustlers who engage weaker players in a money game. It’s also a sport in which age is not a factor, he said.

“It’s very social and lots of fun,” he said about the game. “There is always the element in pool that allows you to continually improve.”

Jon Sundvold, a recreational player who bought an Olhausen table in December 2005, accepted Schmidt’s offer of a free lesson because his son wanted to learn to play the game.

“Fred probably showed my son too many good tips because he beats me now on a regular basis,” Sundvold said.

Schmidt also repairs the tables at Booches, all but one of which were made during World War I.

“Fred takes good care of us,” said Rick Robertson, co-owner of Booches. “He does all the maintenance on our tables, including reclothing once a year.” Schmidt supplies all of the billiard accessories for the restaurant, said Robertson.

Just as there are many varieties of the game, billiards tables are often customized with different woods, stains, cloth colors and other features, Schmidt said. Prices range from $500 to $15,000 depending on if the tables are new, used, or antiques, he said.

For players looking for a more challenging game, Columbia has two national billiards leagues: the Association for Pool and the American Poolplayers Association.