Are Men Better at Pool?

By Cory Franklin | May 2, 2025 

Two recent events in the United Kingdom, neither of which received wide publicity here in the US, provide a new perspective on the transgender issue. The first was a landmark determination, in which the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that for the purposes of future legislation the definition of a woman refers to “a biological woman and biological sex.”  The Court said that transgender people must not be discriminated against but the decision is likely to exclude them from women-only restrooms, women’s prisons and women’s sports in Great Britain.

The second was the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series Event 2 held in a suburb of Manchester, where two transgender women defeated all female competitors to compete against each other in the women’s final event. Not surprisingly, a controversy developed at having two “assigned males at birth” competing for the women’s crown, even as the eventual champion, Harriet Haynes, took the position that pool is not a gender-affected sport and transgender women do not have an advantage over natural-born females.

Sharron Davies, one of Great Britain’s greatest female swimmers, who has written extensively about transgender sports competition, protested in no uncertain terms. She called the episode “bloody ridiculous and grossly wrong in every way.”  Ms. Davies has a relevant history: as Britain’s top swimmer in the 1970s, she lost out on Olympic medals because she was forced to compete against the notorious East German women’s swimmers who in those days unfairly dominated the Olympics after being primed with male hormones by the East German athletic establishment.

The question remains: do men have an advantage at the billiards table?

Some indirect indicators suggest they do. While there are some supremely talented women players, the longest runs in billiards have all been by men. Further, in professional competition, women-against-women matches last longer than men-against-men matches because the men make more shots in their innings, creating a shorter game. A female champion can hold her own against very good male players, but not at the highest level.

Men are taller with longer reaches, a clear advantage at the table. They have stronger fingers and are generally stronger, meaning they can generate more power with less effort, and this results in better control when striking the cue ball.

Harriet Haynes and others counter by saying the explanation is not a physical advantage but a cultural one. For years, girls were traditionally discouraged from playing pool when they were young – the pool hall was not a girls’ hangout. Even now that the stigma has largely disappeared, women still have not generally amassed as many hours honing their skill as men.  Others claim that the longer women’s matches are the result of different, more contemplative and time-consuming strategies at the table during the game.

Comes now science writer Starre Vartan, who has written a new book, The Stronger Sex, that claims that women are actually “stronger” than men, not in terms of power but in the sense of endurance, flexibility, immunity, pain tolerance, and longevity.  Echoing Harriet Haynes, she believes the differences are cultural – girls are not brought up to be as physically conditioned – and this explains why men win.

In sports that involve size, speed and strength as it is traditionally understood, this argument is demonstrably false. Martina Navratilova, arguably the greatest female tennis player in history, has spoken extensively on the transgender issue in sports and readily admits the top woman player in the world would lose in straight sets to any low-ranked man on the professional circuit. Several years ago, the US Women’s gold medal soccer team was beaten easily by a U-15 team of high school boys. That is not cultural.

But in the case of pool, are those who claim men have a physical advantage correct or is it merely a game of skill, with men’s superiority the result of culture? The poolroom becomes the venue for an athletic variation on the centuries-old “nature versus nurture” debate. Are outcomes determined by our birth genes or how we are raised – or some ineluctable combination of both.

This is where the mantra “believe science” reaches its limits. Despite the arguments on both sides of the transgender men in the pool dispute, the issue cannot be answered conclusively because no comparative scientific study of men and women players could ever comprehensively account for all the possible effects of past cultural practices. We can never know for certain.

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are less than a year away so the transgender issue in competitive sports is likely to intensify. Sharron Davies and Maria Navratilova are champions who have been leaders in trying to preserve women’s sports. They concur that the only solution to the question of fairness (biological men competing against women) versus inclusivity (not discriminating against transgenders) is having three categories of competitive sports: men’s, women’s and a third, open, which anyone can enter. In the third category, biological and transgender men and women can all compete against each other.

It is a compromise, to be sure, and some may object, but it is the only one that acknowledges that there are some debates science can referee but not resolve.

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Dr. Cory Franklin

Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine. 

Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.

In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.  

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