Sports: Table topper

Readers of a certain vintage may remember snooker parlours or pool halls from the 1980s, 1990s and early aughties: seedy, seamy, heady dens that drew in many a student after, sometimes during, school. Dim lights, musty carpets, and vending machines that sputtered out Georgia coffee or milo in teeny paper cups. They cost less than fifty cents, and tasted like it. At a table, or a few, a menacing character(s) glaring balefully into the distance, chalking the business end of their cue with sinister twists of the blue cube. Betting. Liquor. Screamed Hokkien vulgarities after missed shots. Always, a whiff of violence, as if one were suspended in a Tarantino film in the seconds just before knives and bullets and people go flying. “Parents at the time would say ‘Huh, play billiards? No, no, no, no, no. Cannot, cannot, cannot. This is Ah Beng sports [sic],’” remembered Marvin Lim, a former national billiards player who started playing in 1989. 

By 2006, when eight-year-old Aloysius Yapp picked up pool, it had shed some of its reputation as character shredder. Still, the path to becoming Singapore’s first professional pool player was marked with unusual choices. Not least his decision in 2010 to drop out of St Patrick’s School in Secondary Two with, astonishingly, support from his mom. It took a decade for the decision to be vindicated. In 2021, Yapp became the world’s best pool player—the first Singaporean, obviously, to do so, after consistent, deep runs in top tournaments. But he hadn’t won any. So a joyful occasion, yes, but also somewhat hollow. “I felt, and still feel, like I needed a major title,” he told ST. A king without a fief. 

Until this year, that is. Yapp has been on a tear in 2025. He won his first major title, the tennis equivalent of a Grand Slam, on Mother’s Day, and followed it up with a second earlier this month. The back-to-back major wins were already unprecedented on the professional circuit. This past Sunday, he pocketed a third, the US Open, beating current world number one Fedor Gorst in a dramatic three-hour final. Later, Yapp, christened Majin Buu by fans for his likeness to the magical Dragon Ball character, celebrated by clambering onto the table. That was the only “raucous” thing about a match played under bright lights, between two natty gents who exchanged polite smiles and handshakes at the end. Pool once inspired dread in parents; it may now conjure dreams.

Politics: Pritam and Zhul

Pritam Singh of The Workers’ Party (WP) and Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) continued their public reemergence. Singh appeared on the “Yah Lah But” podcast, his third media interview in recent weeks. He said that before GE2025, he’d been conscious of the limelight attendant to the leader of the opposition (LO) role, and hence had preferred for his WP colleagues to garner air time. “Now that elections have passed, it has occurred to me that it may be helpful to go out there every once in a while to share my views and thoughts on certain issues.”