Photo by Milton Morris
Ewa Mataya Laurance
AGE: 50
LIVES IN: Conway
CLAIM TO FAME: Current International and World Cup Trick Shot Champion, holder of multiple World and U.S. Open 9-ball titles
ABOUT HER NAME: It’s pronounced Eva
LEISURE ACTIVITY: Golf with her husband, Mitch Laurance, the host of “On the Green Golf TV”
LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Her nickname, “The Striking Viking,” didn’t come about until she needed a clever URL for her website
CO-OP AFFILIATION: Member of Horry Electric Cooperative
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Professional billiards player Ewa Laurance is in teaching mode as she bends over the pool table in her Conway home. She takes aim, and in an assertive swoop—followed by a sharp crack!—she breaks, scattering the balls across the green felt.
“Now this is where the physics comes in,” she says, lining up her next shot. “I’m going to show you how to move the cue ball around.”
Her love affair with pool began at age 14 when she followed her brother and a teenage crush into a pool hall in her hometown of Gävle, Sweden. “After playing a couple of times, I completely forgot about him [the crush],” she says. Enamored with the game, she was soon playing 10 hours a day.
She came to the U.S. at the age of 17 to represent Europe in the World Championships and, with the support of her family, decided to stay. Her career as a professional tournament player, trick-shot artist and television commentator still takes her around the world, but since 1999 she and her family—plus an evolving menagerie of horses, cats and dogs—have called South Carolina home.
“My daughter had a horse,” she says when explaining why the family wound up living on their 3-acre property in Horry County. Although it was an adjustment at first, the family happily embraced the rural lifestyle. “I travel around so much it’s heaven for me to come home. We joke all the time about ‘Conway heaven.’ It’s so peaceful and quiet here.”
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Get More
Learn more about Ewa Laurance at her website, strikingviking.com.
To help amateurs perfect their game, Laurance stars in a series of how-to videos hosted by long-time sponsor Brunswick Billiards here.
She also owns and runs, with her family, the Coastal Carolina chapter of the American Poolplayers Association Pool League. For more information, click here.