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.  

 

Comments 30

  3. There was a great peer reviewed study done on the fairness of transgenders in sports. Believe it or not, I found it on the ACLU website of all places. I’m not sure if it is still there, but I clipped it and will try to post it here. Whenever I have someone tell me that there is no competitive edge for biological men playing in women’s sports pretending to be a woman, I politely ask for their number or email and forward this study on to them. Argument is over. Have a great weekend everyone. Not sure if this will work, but I will give it a try.
    https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/049-9_exhibit_i.pdf

    1. Thanks for the article. It’s excellent and sound science.
      When I was in college ALL the professional psychological organizations considered queers and transgenitals mentally ill. Unfortunately many of these sickos became psychologists and psychiatrists who made a mental sickness normal.

    2. I think that while the paper acknowledges small but clearly significant prepubital differences between the sexes, its major thrust is focussing on androgenic suppression post puberty. In that regard it shows that androgenic hormone suppression post puberty does not lead to significant decrements in biological male muscle mass or strength. I suspect that is why you found it on the ACLU website as it serves as their primary rationale for transition surgery in children, BEFORE the onset of puberty. By the way, this is one of the reasons why I resigned my long term membership in the ACLU.

  5. I think the advantage male transexuals have in playing pool has to be their familiarity with handling balls.That’s why I think they should all be castrated!

  6. I think that for young girls to work hard to prepare themselves for competition in “girls sports”, then to have their hard work, dreams of victory, and in some cases, scholarships and other opportunities taken away from them by someone with an unfair advantage (being a male) is sickening.

    But the thing that bothers me just as much is that these young girls are sometimes forced to share locker rooms, including shower and bathroom facilities, with males, which in my opinion is even more sickening.

    2. The biggest problem is it destroys women’s sports! I like watching LPGA players because their tempo is ideal, because women golfers struggle with too much flexibility, so they compensate with perfect tempo.

      If men play, I’ll tune out for good, no matter what sport it is. Out

      1. Similar reason why I like watching woman’s tennis: the power is less than the men’s game, so the rallies are generally longer, but the skills are still there … in fact their skills are more translatable to me as a serious recreational player. I appreciate that.

        And yes. I do not believe in compromise here: men do not belong in woman’s sports. End of story.

  7. Men who identify otherwise need to compete in the open category. It’s successful already. For the sake of my and society’s daughters getting a fair and level playing field, women’s sports need to be women only. Keep solutions and implementations simple and easy for society to implement (e.g. no list of exemptions to the solution).

  8. Nice column, Cory, thoughtful yet cautious. The issue at large inspires me to recognize that women competitively exceed men at EVERY sport. Including basketball.

    (Just kidding, guys. Have you watched the WNBA?)

    . . . including weightlifting!

    (Hey, wait. Plenty of women read JKN, don’t they?)

    Never mind.

      1. I think the only sport – of which I am aware – in which women might be better suited physiologically than men would be open water long distance swimming (due to their natural increased body fat).

  9. This was an activity where I thought the genders might be equal. I assume bowling is similar to pool due to the strength of men. Ability to toss a heavier ball etc. What about bocce or other sedentary games?

    1. I don’t play or follow chess, but a cursory search tells me that there are female chess grandmasters and there is a Women’s World Championship. AFAIK, no woman has challenged for the Men’s WC, nor have there been trans challengers for the Women’s title. I would think that chess would be a natural for an “open” title, as opposed to men/women, but what do I know?

  10. Where are all the transgender men in men’s sports if biological men do not have a physical advantage over biological women? How does a biological man, like Lia Thomas, for example, reconcile beating competitors who are not so obviously dominant in height and bulk? What kind of person, who lacks the talent to excel in their sport against competitors of their biological sex, takes pride in winning over someone whom science tells us is not their physical match? How has our society crumbled to a point where “pick on someone your own size” has been steamrolled from our morals? Why is this controversy a one way street – young women who throw their hearts and souls into spending endless hours perfecting their skills to excel being trampled by men who simply need to “identify” as women to compete against them and destroy their chances of winning scholarships and other meaningful awards and honors to recognize their sacrifices? Disagree with any of this. Then explain how a team of 15 year-old high school boys was able to defeat the US Women’s National Team 5-2 in a match which was part of its preparation for the FIFA Women’s World Cup. How have we come to a point where all a person need do is do no more than simply “identify” as something to gain access to private spaces which have never been available to them before? Everyday, and I kid you not, I wake-up hoping that this so-called progressive thinking will come-up with something, anything, that makes common sense to bring civility back into style. And, every night I go to sleep disappointed. The spotlight on this lunacy gets no better than having two biological men being the finalists in a women’s pool tournament.

  11. Open. Now that’s a simple concept. If you don’t think these TG folks know inside they have an advantage I have a bridge in the Sahara to sell you. No. matter how they play “Dress up” or go thru irreversible surgeries (often making decisions at a time when courts often don’t hold these children accountable because of incompletely developed brains) they were born as males period. Yes there are a tiny fractions that are born ambiguous but these numbers are minuscule. Hmmm ever stop to think of a woman who transitions to be a male wanting to compete in men’s sports? I’ll wait for you to share an instance.
    Boys and men in their locker room. Women and girls in theirs. You already have gender free spaces. Go there.

    1. LOL. That is called age. Bobby was 55 yrs old. By the way even at 55 yrs old, Bobby did beat the number ONE ranked woman that year Margaret Court.

  14. I’ve been for that 3rd category from day one. Want to be a freak, compete in the third. At least it would level the playing field. I don’t know why that is so hard to figure out. But then these are the same people who don’t understand the word “illegal” or the phrase “against the law”.

  15. Well I see knowledge of tennis is not Dr Franklin’s strong suit. While I agree with Martina’s opinion, the most physically dominating player by far in woman’s tennis history and arguably the greatest of all, was not Martina, but rather Serena Williams. In fact her service speed exceeded that of many of the professional men, including that of all-time great Rafa Nadal. Yet Tennis is more than just brute force on serve. In the beginning of her career both she and her not quite as great sister (Venus) were both defeated by the 203rd ranked male tennis player. Even at her peak, Serena would have no chance against the top 25 ranked men’s tennis players, let alone the big three of Rafa, Nole and the Fed.

  16. And I disagree with your solution. It is not a solution at all, but rather a far greater problem masquerading as a solution. A third category? Like who’s gonna pay? You think sports are cost free? I’m sure a third category would generate an amendment for Title IX which mandates women athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports in educational institutions that receive federal funds, from elementary schools to colleges and universities. In other words if a school cuts a woman’s sport it must do the same to a men’s sport. And I am sure this mathematics would be applied to the “third” category, effectively killing woman’s sports … and maybe even men’s sports as well. Sorry “trans” are protected with due process under law and “equal protection” BUT just like a blind person is so protected, that blind person has no right under law to drive a car let alone pilot an airplane. Likewise “trans folks” have no right to partake – or disrupt – women’s sports. Screw ‘em.

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