Church and a guardian angel helped pool player Aloysius Yapp to succeed

SINGAPORE – Eight-ball world champion Aloysius Yapp has been playing some divine pool over the past 12 months. But unknown to many, the make-or-break moment for the secondary school dropout-turned-millionaire sportsman occurred in a Catholic church in Tampines.

Ahead of his major title defence at the ongoing UK Open, The Sunday Times caught up with the 30-year-old Singaporean – who has a world championship title and three other majors – at the Aspire Star Arena billiard hall during a rare return home.

Chuckling as he recounted his mother’s objection to a teenager wanting to play pool full time, he said: “During the time I didn’t want to go to school, she heard the priest share a message (in church) about not burying talent. It was perfect timing.”

It was tough on Angie Tay, a single mother whose husband died while working in Thailand when Yapp was only nine, to cope with her son’s single-mindedness.

The then 13-year-old began skipping classes at St Patrick’s School to practise for long hours at the Chinese Swimming Club and he did not speak to his mum for weeks, returning to their Simei flat only after she was asleep.

The 62-year-old personal assistant admitted she was “frustrated with him and myself” then. She added: “In my heart, I believed God gave Aloysius the talent to play pool, so I should encourage him to use that talent and use it well.

“Ultimately, I never regretted my decision as Singapore’s education system is very robust and we can plan it according to our schedule. Parents should trust their children, encourage them to explore their talents or skills when they are young and give them opportunities to try and prove themselves.”

A guardian angel – Paul Pang, a billiard table fitter at supply store The Q Shop – added wings to Yapp’s fledgling career.

The duo met when Yapp was an impressionable eight-year-old, who first watched Tony Robles beat Santos Sambajon to win the 2004 BCA Open on TV.

He was enthralled by the clacking of the balls and their colours as they zipped across the table, as well as how focused and intense the players were.

In a sign of things to come, he pestered Tay to buy him a chalk and bridge head “because they look cool” and she took him to The Q Shop at the Bras Basah Complex.

Again, serendipity struck, as a coach recommended by Pang thought Yapp was too short. His mother brought him back to Pang, who agreed to coach the right-handed youngster who instinctively played with his left.

The 75-year-old, a former Cuesports Singapore vice-president, told the Sunday Times he had actually stopped coaching kids then, as many had come and gone without showing real dedication.

Pang said: “But when Aloysius came back with Angie, he looked really serious, so I allowed him to use the facilities and guided him along. She would bring him in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and I would send him home at midnight.

“He was totally different from other kids. He was very dedicated and didn’t want to go anywhere during school holidays except to look for a pool table to play on.”

At a young age, Yapp was a “very good potter who rarely missed on a seven-foot pool table” noted Pang.

To encourage him to study, Pang dangled a carrot – a limited-edition $2,000 Predator cue Yapp had been eyeing – if he could score at least 180 for his Primary School Leaving Examination.

He managed 170, and would later register a B4 in English and an F9 in mathematics as a private O-level candidate. But he aced geometry on the pool table.

While he did not get the cue, Yapp gained something far more valuable – the eye-opening experience of competing around the world, starting from the 2008 WPA World Junior Pool Championships in the US.

Two years later, Pang took him to a billiard exhibition in China, where guests could play friendly games with the 2009 women’s world champion. Yapp lost twice to the then 17-year-old Liu Shasha but left inspired.

He said: “The emcee shared how her mum took her out of school to play full time and that’s where I got the crazy idea to do the same that year.”

With Tay’s trust, Pang went all out to see through Yapp’s development.

He convinced Cuesports Singapore to lower the senior-tournament age limit from 16 to 10, so that Yapp could compete against opponents of his level and qualify for the national team at 14.

Besides free coaching and equipment, Pang also helped Yapp secure sponsors and chaperoned him at professional tournaments overseas.

His prodigy repaid his dedication with his strong work ethic and intense competitiveness.

Pang said: “Before he stepped into a competition venue, he doesn’t talk because he is so focused. When he lost, he would be so pissed off. I had to teach him to accept losses as lessons he could learn from.”

In 2014, Yapp announced himself on the world stage when he clinched both the Asian and world junior pool championships. Pang knew it was time to let him soar further under national coach Toh Lian Han.

He said: “He had already reached world-class level and I just told him this is now his livelihood and there is no looking back. I’m proud to see that, till today, he still practises for eight hours.”

National service in 2018 and 2019, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic the next year, prevented Yapp from building on his Golden Break 9-ball Open victory and SEA Games 9-ball doubles gold in 2017.

But he never stopped working on his game and was quickest out of the blocks when pandemic restrictions eased, and his deep runs in big tournaments helped him reach the top of the World Pool Association rankings in October 2021.

In 2022, he took his game to another level after his Taiwanese friend, the late former world champion Chang Jung-lin, influenced him to develop an equipment obsession.

Yapp said: “We were at the practice table at the US Open and he told me he needed to make his cue heavier because of the less humid conditions there.

“I was sceptical at first, but when I played on the tables, I felt something was missing. After screwing on weight bolts to the butt of my cue, there was more power and I played really good.”

He also experiments with cue shafts because the deflection they impart on the cue ball differs when playing with spin. 

His form truly exploded in 2025 with 10 local and international titles. These included his first three World Nineball Tour (WNT) major victories, a historic run of consecutive wins at the UK Open, Florida Open and US Open.

A year later, he became Singapore’s first world pool champion and millionaire, when the US$90,000 (S$115,000) prize from his WPA Men’s 8-Ball World Championship triumph pushed his career earnings past the S$1 million mark.

Although he has made winning look easy of late, it is anything but, and the stress is real. The skin on the back of his right middle-finger joint is raw because he has been subconsciously picking at it during matches in recent years.

Other than prize money, his main source of income is the Sport Excellence Scholarship, which is dependent on his WNT ranking.

He plans his own globetrotting schedule, taking into consideration each event’s prize purse and whether it can be linked to another in the vicinity in the following week.

From March 2025, he has competed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Scotland, England, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, the US, Taiwan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

To mediate burnout, he is “trying to plan my calendar better to give myself more time to rest physically and mentally”.

He then revealed that he initially thought of skipping the 2026 8-ball world championship because he is better at his preferred 9-ball, where there are balls numbered one to nine and players must strike the lowest-numbered ball first as they aim to legally pot the 9-ball at any point to win the game.

The objective of 8-ball, on the other hand, is to pot either set of seven solid-coloured or striped balls and then the 8-ball before your opponent. Yapp felt that with more balls and more clusters, he had trouble finding the right shots to clear the table in this variant.

Laughing, the pool champion said: “I was there only because my fiancee (Indonesian Silviana Lu) was also playing a tournament in St Louis and there was a mixed doubles event we could play together and ended up finishing fifth.

“But never in my life would I think that I would win my first world championship in 8-ball, because I can’t even win an event in Singapore, where my best finish is reaching the quarter-finals.”

He developed headaches while racking his brain for the right shot and had to forgo his customary late-night practice to rest.

But the more he played, the more enlightened he became.

Yapp said: “It helped that I was breaking better than my opponents who were having problems with dry breaks. I also started catching the patterns and figuring out which is the first ball I should hit to have an easier run-out.”

While he will try to retain his world title in 2027, he does not plan to play more 8-ball events. Instead, he knows what his next goals are after clearing his bucket list of becoming a major winner, world champion and world No. 1 before he turned 30 on May 2.

He said: “I still have the 9-ball and 10-ball world championships and more majors to play for this year, and I really want to win a singles gold at the SEA Games and Asian Games because I haven’t won those.”