It'll be like a scene from BBC television series ‘Pot Black' when Tauranga Citz Club snooker members pick up their cues for the New Zealand Masters Snooker National Championships this weekend.
They won't be in their jeans, jandals and T-shirt – the dress code is far more formal.
'One of the things we do insist on is we keep a standard of dress,” says snooker player Darryl Jensen. 'We wear bow ties, business-style shirts, buttoned at the collar and at the sleeves. We wear a vest, dress trousers and dress shoes. It's a standard we like to keep.”
Wearing his best suit and bow tie, Darryl will join about 80 masters snooker players from throughout the North Island at the Tauranga Citz Club for the free tournament on August 21-23.
'This tournament would be one of the biggest snooker tournaments of its type in the country,” says Darryl.
'It always is because we have the facility to handle it. We have six tables there on a permanent basis, and for the tournament we hire out another six tables.”
Darryl started snooker at age 16. 'It looked like fun,” he says. It's as simple as that. 'I don't know how or why or whatever, it's just something that happened when I was a kid.”
He's only recently picked up his first cue after a 40-year break.
'I'm always practising,” says Darryl. 'I'm trying to catch up on the 40 years that I wasn't playing.
'I only just decided to take it up again last year because I saw all the tables and thought: ‘I wonder if can still play the game?'”
And he can. But is he still as good as he was at 16? 'There's a lot of debate around that kind of thing,” says Darryl. 'It's just different. There's a hell of a lot of years under the bridge. The game's approached differently.”
Darryl plays a competitive type of game. He's got his eye on the championship title this weekend.
'To my way of thinking you never go into a tournament without thinking you've got some kind of show of getting somewhere. However, you've also got another 79-odd people all thinking the same way.”
He did win the Waikato tournament about a year ago. But it was fellow snooker player Barry Kid who won the Tauranga tournament two years ago. 'He's not playing this year though, he's in Australia.”