Short people have limited opportunities as professional basketball players. Tall and slender is not a promising recipe for success in sumo. Many other sports require specific physical characteristics for performance at championship levels — but not pool.

Size, weight, gender, physical limitations — none of it matters, according to international billiards star Jeanette Lee, as long as you can "control your body, quiet yourself and make that perfect swing."

"Anyone can do it," she said in a telephone interview from her Indianapolis home.

Lee, known to fans around the world as the "Black Widow," will be in residence tomorrow night at Pipeline Cafe, demonstrating trick shots and possibly playing a few challenge matches for charity. She’s here as a guest of the American Poolplayers Association, an organization that encourages people of all ages to participate in the sport.

Lee took up the game at 18 and went professional at 21. Seventeen years later, after winning more than 30 national and international titles, she’s been ranked at various times as the No. 1 pool player in the world, hailed as one of the sport’s most powerful people, and named one of the world’s sexiest female athletes by ESPN.

Lee says the key to playing well is developing the "muscle memory" needed to make that perfect stroke every time.

"You’re not gonna think your way there; it’s not a mathematical puzzle as some people might think. You can calculate it, but you have to do it. You have to have the muscle memory. It’s not gonna happen unless you have trained your body to execute the concept."

Lee developed the muscle memory she needed to reach professional status by practicing as much as 10 hours a day. She studied strategy and learned what she could from old-time pool pros, but says there is no substitute for time on the table perfecting that perfect swing.

"It’s not like chess where you can think all you want and (the execution) requires no coordination. (In chess) 100 percent of the time I can move this piece to that spot, whereas in pool, you can look all you want and want this ball to go in that pocket and line it up, but unless you have the right fundamental swing and alignment, you’re not going to make it there; it’s just not gonna go there.

"You have to cause an action, bring it up in your mind, control your body, quiet yourself, and make the perfect swing. That’s what we do every shot. In golf, in archery, every shot. (And) you have every chance in the world to succumb to your own mental weaknesses."

Coming back from a "maternity break" after giving birth to Savannah Lee Breedlove ("my itsy bitsy spider") last month, Lee said she is playing pool at least four hours a day, five days a week. Caring for a newborn and 1-year-old daughter Chloe Angelee has cut into her practice time. "(Chloe) is crawling everywhere, she wants your attention every second, moving everything, pulling everything, poking everything," she said.

Lee is proof that physical limitations need not keep dedicated players from becoming champions. At 13 she was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. To date she’s had almost a dozen surgeries and continues to receive treatment for related ailments.

"Everyone has their own journey with it. It has to do with the recovery and how bad the level of scoliosis is. I’ve had 10 major surgeries, so I’ve had quite a journey and I still continue to have back pains but it’s not really from the scoliosis. Scoliosis was the beginning but from there I had deteriorated discs (and other complications). I’ve just had multiple problems in my back and different parts of my joints.

"I just try to stay really fit. I go to the doctor, I go to the gym, I go to physical therapy. I eat healthy. I stretch a lot and I lift babies all day long."

The intimidating "Black Widow" mystique notwithstanding, Lee’s sense of humor shines through as she describes herself as "a woman who breaks balls for a living."

"It’s (said) in humor, but it’s what I do!"