Masako Katsura

Masako Katsura was born on 7 March 1913 in Tokyo.

Little is known about Katsura's childhood in Japan.

Katsura had three sisters and a brother.

Their father died when Katsura was 12 years old and she went to live with her elder sister and her sister's husband, Tomio Kobashi, who owned a billiard parlor.

By 13 she was spending time in her brother-in-law's billiard room, and by 14 she was working as a billiard attendant there.

Kobashi was a fine player and taught Katsura the fundamentals of various carom billiards games.

Katsura also had a billiard table at home, bought by her family after she showed intense interest in the sport.

Katsura practiced diligently, and began competing against Japanese men and beating them.

At just 15, Katsura won the women's championship straight rail tournament of Japan.

Matsuyama was also U.S. national champion in 1934, was the runner-up three other times and had four second-place finishes in world competition at 18.2 balkline prior to World War II.

Matsuyama was impressed with Katsura and began teaching her top level play.

In 1937, Katsura met Kinrey Matsuyama, who had won Japan's national three-cushion championship multiple times.

By 1947, Katsura was a long-established billiard star in Japan—the country's only female professional player.

During 1947 Katsura caught the eye of American serviceman Vernon Greenleaf (no relation to the pool and carom billiards champion Ralph Greenleaf), a master sergeant in the U.S. Army's Quartermaster Corps who had been in the armed services for 22 years.

Katsura and Greenleaf first met in a Tokyo service club where she was giving billiard exhibitions.

Greenleaf began taking lessons from Katsura and was quickly smitten with her.

Masako Katsura (桂 マサ子), nicknamed "Katsy" and sometimes called the "First Lady of Billiards", was a Japanese carom billiards player who was most active in the 1950s.

She was the first woman to compete and place among the best in the male-dominated world of professional billiards.

First learning the game from her brother-in-law and then under the tutelage of Japanese champion Kinrey Matsuyama, Katsura became Japan's only female professional player.

In competition in Japan, she took second place in the country's national three-cushion billiards championship three times.

In exhibition she was noted for 10,000 points at the game of straight rail.

After marrying a U.S. Army non-commissioned officer in 1950, Katsura emigrated to the United States in 1951.

They were married on 30 November 1950, but never had any children.

At the time of their marriage Katsura already boasted two second-place finishes at Japan's national three-cushion championship; one from the year prior to their wedding.

She claimed the runner-up spot for a third time the year of her marriage.

About that time she accomplished the lofty feat of scoring 10,000 contiguous points at straight rail in an exhibition by the balls around the table 27 times over about 4 1⁄2 hours.

She stopped at 10,000 points only because it was a benchmark round number.

In later years she said that her high run in three-cushion billiards (number of points scored consecutively in a single inning) was 19.

In 1951 Greenleaf was transferred to a U.S. post from Haneda Air Base in Tokyo.

There she was invited to play in the 1952 U.S.-sponsored World Three-Cushion Championship, ultimately taking seventh place at that competition.

Katsura was the first woman ever to be included in any world billiards tournament.

Her fame cemented, Katsura went on an exhibition tour of the United States with eight-time world champion Welker Cochran, and later with 51-time world champion Willie Hoppe.

In 1953 and 1954, she again competed for the world three-cushion crown, taking fifth and fourth places respectively.

Little was seen of Katsura for the next few years.

She made 30 exhibition appearances in 1958, and went on a one-week exhibition engagement the following year with Harold Worst, but did not compete in any professional tournaments.

In 1959, she made two television appearances on ABC's You Asked for It, and one on the CBS primetime television hit What's My Line? Katsura returned to competition in 1961, playing a challenge match for the World Three-Cushion title against Worst, then reigning world champion, and was defeated by him.

"Then I turned professional and began touring with a sister all over Japan, China and Formosa", said Katsura in a 1959 interview.

Katsura's two younger sisters, Noriko and Tadako, also won the women's straight rail championship in other years.

Katsura disappeared from the sport thereafter, only making a brief impromptu appearance in 1976.

She moved back to Japan around 1990 and died in 1995.