When one of our best professionals is playing, it is no uncommon thing to hear the remark made, ‘What beautiful strength!’ To my mind the excellence of a fine player’s game lies not so much in his strength as in his accuracy. Given accuracy, strength will follow; at all events there is no reason why it should not. But strength without accuracy is useless, and even worse than useless. If a good player and a bad one meet, the latter usually has the better of the leaves. The reason is not difficult to discover, for the good player fails far more frequently from want of accuracy than from bad strength, and the balls are left fairly placed for his opponent. The bad player has little accuracy and less strength. He goes for his stroke, and chances position. After a score he leaves himself little, but if he fail he leaves little for his opponent. His play is characterised by a series of disjointed efforts.
But, although the good player fails more often from want of accuracy than from bad strength, he does not, unless the balls are very close together, try for exact strength. To use a well-understood phrase, he tries to get them there or thereabouts. Take a very fine player, and let him play from baulk with the other two balls nicely placed in the middle of the table, and let him play two breaks with the balls so placed. It is almost certain that after the third stroke, probably the second, the breaks will branch out differently. The good player only tries to place the balls about where he means. If he be at all successful, he will have the choice of playing one of perhaps half a dozen different strokes. Not one of these half-dozen strokes is, it may be, difficult; and then he has to consider which will leave him the best break, and if there be three or more leaving an equally good game he takes the easiest. What is deserving of observation is that, whichever he selects, he usually makes the stroke and approximately carries out his idea.
It is this deadly accuracy which is so noticeable in the play of the best professionals. How have they obtained it? First and chiefly by years of constant and assiduous practice, secondly by a correct mechanical style. Nothing can take the place of the former. No amount of teaching will be the equivalent of strong individual effort extended over a length of time. The player who really excels at billiards must have given a large amount of time to it. He who plays a wonderful game, and yet hardly ever touches a cue, exists only in the imagination of the incompetent novelist. But, although nothing can compensate for hard practice, something may be done for the beginner by teaching him how to obtain a correct style. To avoid errors is the surest and quickest way to real progress, and to thoroughly grasp the idea of a true mechanical style is the most important lesson in billiards. There is no one style that can be said to be the only correct and proper one. If the best half-dozen players be watched, it will be seen that they all differ in various ways from one another. The position of their heads, and the way in which they hold the cue, are often entirely different. One thing, however, may be noted, that however much they differ from one another, they are true to themselves. Each man keeps rigidly to his own style. His position and his manner of delivering the stroke are constant so far as circumstances permit, and this is the lesson which the amateur may properly take to heart. Billiards is more of a mechanical game than anything else, and, because the mechanical part of it is so important, nothing can take the place of continual practice on right lines. And even that which may have been a defective style originally may, by becoming habitual, lose half its injuriousness. The beginner, however, wants to avoid defects so that he may have nothing subsequently to unlearn, and he wants to know the nearest road to the best game of which he is capable. When he has once got a clear idea of what a correct style is, he is next door to getting the thing itself. And it is worth some little trouble to get. For not only will his general progress at the game be more rapid, but he will find the utility of it at a critical moment. Some pernicious trick or mannerism may not be particularly injurious on ordinary occasions, but when the stress of a match comes it is apt to be fatal. It is then that the man with an easy and correct style finds half his work done for him, as it were.
It is by no means an uncommon thing to see what may be called the pump-handle style, where the cue, instead of moving horizontally or nearly so, is at the commencement of the stroke lifted high at the butt, and then brought forward with a circular sweep. This makes it a matter of no little skill in itself to hit the ball at all correctly, and yet we see players who apparently are not satisfied with the ordinary difficulties of billiards, but must add a quite superfluous one to every stroke.
Most of these eccentric players must be to some extent aware of their eccentricities, and a very little reflection would show that they are quite unnecessary and may be harmful.
Apart from any theoretical consideration of the matter, a casual observation of really good players proves that they do not indulge in these atrocities. In fact, our best players are, almost without exception, easy, graceful players, and distinctly the best break I ever saw North play was at the same time the quickest and least demonstrative of any I have seen made by that player. The play of John Roberts is almost above criticism, and his style is at once the delight and despair of all. Diggle, Dawson, and Richards, more especially the last, are charming players to watch. They who can remember Cook at his best will recall with delight a style that was in the opinion of many unrivalled. An imperturbable temper that nothing appeared to ruffle, a nerve that never seemed to fail, a touch always firm and crisp, yet often using a strength so delicate that he seemed to require instruments more accurate than the best manufacturers could supply—these were some of the features of a game that ever had a great fascination for the spectator.
A few words may not be out of place on the benefit of private practice, i.e. practice by oneself. I believe from a tolerably wide experience that they are exceptional, very exceptional, who can keep on improving without having had, at some time or other, a good deal of private practice. How many men there are who play their two or three hours every day, and yet at the end of fifteen years are little, if any, better! It is because their energies are being entirely absorbed by the immediate contest. If they have a fault in style, they have no time to correct it. They cannot make up their minds to court present defeat for a future gain. They play the same old game with the same bad result year in and year out. The least innovation on their stereotyped game will probably result in failure, and perhaps defeat, and is therefore rejected. After a time they come to accept their game as the best of which they are capable, and when they see really good play they admire it, but never appear to dream of taking a hint from it for their own improvement.
A short time given to private practice would do much for such a one. Here there is no opponent to distract, no dread of consequences. The greatest novelty, even to the playing of a losing hazard at dead slow strength the length of the table, may be attempted fearlessly. But this is not all. Not only may every kind of stroke be attempted without any attaching penalty, but if there be a fault of which the player is conscious he may now correct it. His attention is now concentrated upon the one point, and it is wonderful how soon that which has become habitual may be changed by steady determined suppression. Billiards again, at least to play one’s best game, is very much a question of confidence, and confidence is born of familiarity. He who has played a particular stroke in a particular way a hundred times successfully in private practice, not only feels that he can do that stroke in that way in a match, but that it is his best chance of doing the stroke at all. He is in a way compelled into the better class of game.
Probably no amateur is in the least likely to go through the years of continuous labour that the best professionals have given to the game. But in many instances he may, by giving some consideration to the matter and taking a little trouble, acquire a greater degree of accuracy than has hitherto been associated with his game. Accuracy in play means accuracy in striking, and the player has to aim at hitting ball after ball with the precision of a machine. Of course one seldom or never gets two strokes running exactly alike, but the various movements of the body which precede and accompany the delivery of the stroke may be and should be alike. This uniformity of style is the groundwork of accuracy, and it is by a recognition of the various movements and a careful observance of them that the player may obtain a correct mechanical style. He should once for all definitely decide what is the best style for him to adopt, and, having decided, should strictly observe it with unfailing regularity. It is absolutely fatal to keep chopping and changing in the endeavour to copy a better player. In all probability that which is copied has nothing to do with the excellence of the play. It is perhaps some little trick which is peculiar to the man, the result of his build or of his early billiard education. Most of us have known some friend who, after seeing John Roberts give one of his wonderful exhibitions of skill, has attempted to imitate his rapidity of play. The last state of that person is worse than his first. We cannot all play our best in the same way. Some men are naturally quick players, others lose whatever merit they may have in the attempt to hurry through their stroke. Usually, the better practice a man is in the quicker he plays, but, whether he play fast or slow, he should always play naturally and at the same pace. If he be playing badly, conscious hurrying over or dwelling on the stroke will not mend matters. The reason for the bad play must be sought elsewhere. Usually the internal machinery has in some way gone wrong. But the last thing a man cares to admit is any failing in himself. It is far more pleasant to attribute his ill success to something else. Still, if his style be not radically wrong, and if during one of these seasons of depression he attempts to vary it, his game will surely suffer when the causes which led to his temporary deterioration have passed away.
If I venture to give some advice, it is with a double motive; first, to illustrate my meaning how, by a careful attention to details, uniformity of style may be obtained, and, second, in the hope that it may in some respects be found useful by beginners. But before doing so I should like to say a few words as to what I conceive to be the real utility of advice. What is too often the case is this. The beginner tries to recollect before every stroke all he has learnt, and laboriously endeavours to reduce each and every rule into practice at the same time. Some of these rules may be the exact opposite of his previous method. The consequence is that this attempt at wholesale assimilation causes the player to look like a trussed-up fowl, uncomfortable to himself and unnatural to others. He should remember that that which is ungainly in style is usually wrong, always superfluous.