Atlantic City, New Jersey —

After struggling to keep up with Europe for more than a decade, Team USA’s pool team acquired an unlikely star: Russian world champion Fedor Gorst.

Gorst, 25, is the No. 1 ranked pool player in the world and has quickly racked up some of the game’s biggest titles, including two 9-ball world championships and the US Open.

“I knew that I would take heat from a lot of friends back home and my country where I was born,” Gorst told CNN Sports in an interview at the US Open Pool Championship in Atlantic City, where he was trying to repeat as champion at one of the sport’s biggest annual events.

“But I also felt it was natural for me to make that decision because I did have a lot of friends in the United States, and everybody was already treating me like one of their own,” he said.

Gorst’s unlikely journey from Russian world champion to a top player on Team USA was set in motion more than three years ago, when he was suspended from major competitions due to an International Olympic Committee-led ban on Russian athletes following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Gorst moved up a planned trip to the US – and effectively never left. He moved to southern Indiana with his then-girlfriend, Kristina Tkach, who is the top-ranked female pool-player, where they lived with Gorst’s manager. He later helped one of his closest friends on the pro circuit, a Ukrainian living in Kyiv, make the move to the US.

The next year, Gorst obtained his green card, and pool’s biggest tournament operator, Matchroom Sport, made the savvy — if controversial — decision to allow him to begin competing under an American flag at a time when rising tensions between the two nations echoed the Cold War.

Though he’s not yet a citizen, Gorst is poised to be the face of American pool amid one of the biggest pushes in years to get more money and eyeballs on the game’s stars and to help pool regain a place in mainstream American culture, where it’s had a long and storied — albeit checkered — history.

Gorst was added to Team USA in 2023 for the Mosconi Cup, an end-of-year event where the US faces off against Europe in a way that’s similar to golf’s Ryder Cup. The US has lost 13 of the last 15 competitions, and Gorst gave the five-man US team some world-class firepower to try to close a talent gap.

Fedor Gorst lines up a shot during the 2025 US Open Pool Championship. Pete Marovich/American Reportage for CNN

Fedor Gorst at the 2025 US Open Pool Championship. Pete Marovich/American Reportage for CNN

“Technically, it’s kind of farcical, but it made sense from the standpoint: This is where he’s living. This is where he’s most comfortable. This is where he’s developed a fan base,” said Mike Panozzo, the longtime publisher of industry magazine Billiards Digest.

The Mosconi Cup, which is organized by Matchroom, is the most anticipated event on the pool calendar, attracting rou