Billiards.

Southland Times, Issue 19514, 13 May 1922, Page 10

Billiards.

(By

“Spot.”)

Local saloon keepers report brisk business. Some good tournaments are likely in Invercargill this season. M’Conachy seems to have had the better of that little incident at Newcastle when Tom Reece forfeited the game. It was 9.45 and Reece said he had a train to catch at 10.45, and, as they were almost level and required 400 to make the game. Reece wanted to quit, and asked: “What are going to 'do M’Conachy?” “Finish the match,” was his reply, “if you want to default do so.” The New Zealander’s reply brought cheers and cries of “Good boy, Mac.” Reece then turned on his heel and left the room, followed by an unfriendly demonstration. M’Conachy was declared winner by the referee, after he had gone out to find Reece and discovered that he had gone. In the Athletic News “Impressionist” has the following notes:— “It was considered that George Gray had satiated billiards in England past further endurance by his mechanical play with the red ball and the rather wearisome building up of colossal breaks. Nevertheless, Clark M’Conachy, the New Zealander aspirant to the title of British champion, is having a successful tour, in spite of the fact that the cult of this stroke is the basic principle of his billiards. “But there is a difference between M’Conachy and his colonial contemporary. Gray. perfected with machine-like infallibility the stroke that brought the red ball in alignment for the middle pockets from the top cushion. Whenever his strength was slightly at fault, and he had to play into the top pocket, one sensed a difficulty. On the other hand I do not suppose that M’Conachy plays more than a dozen consecutive hazards into the middle receptacles, and so you have the spice of variety in his trenchant strokes for those at the top of the table.

There is something spectacular in these swinging drives. The margin for error is much more emphatic. There is animation about this shot. The skill it requires cannot be doubted, for after a series of middle pocket losers it means that different strength end judgment is hastily required to send the cue ball racing into the pocket, what time the red must make a pretty precise angle off three cushions before coming to rest for the middle pockets. McConachy, however, may elect to play a sequence of top pockety losers. Any amateur knows how difficult the long forcing shot is, but McConachy has mastered it to such an extent that it does not appear to embody any terrors for him. The thing that strikes you is his power of cue and the ready facility with which he makes the stroke, there being no tension about it. Moreover there is an immense versatility in the Colonial's delivery. I have seen him play a series of punishing hazards and then turn on to delicate canons and deft positional play off the connecting red winners for the purpose of the top-of-the-table game. “To my mind there is a latent potency in McConachy’s game. Remember that during the whole of his career as a young player he has been utilising the composition type of ball. Coming to this country he had to learn all about the ivory ball, with its many susceptibilities. He has made remarkable strides, and though I would not place him on the same plane as Newman and Smith, there is no denying that if he continues to make proportionate progress by experience he will have the right to challence the best on equal terms.” The London correspondent of the Christchurch Star, writing on March 23, gives a particularly interesting eulogy of Smith in which he has introduced some comments in connection with the individual who is invariably of the opinion that the giants of the present do not compare with the giants of the past. It is difficult to persuade the old billiard player that the game to-day is played better than ever before, he writes. He points to John Roberts or Charles Dawson and says: “You do not know how great were these men. They would have beaten any of the present time players.” The question cannot be proved, but there is the very important fact that never before in the history of the game have such big breaks been made as during the last few seasons. And these breaks do not come singly; they come in sequences that are fairly regular. What the modern player is capable of, W’illie Smith has just shown us. He was playing Inman and at the start he fell a long way behind. Indeed, in the old days we should have thought the match as good as over. Then, however, Smith took off his coat, as it were, and in a day rubbed off over 1,000 points. There has never been such scoring as in this match. On each of four consecutive days, Smith compiled a break of 500 or over. He began the sequence with 584 and this was followed with 570, 752, and 715. These four breaks yielded him the huge total of 2,571 points, or almost one sixth of the total he was scheduled to score in the whole game. It was no wonder that he changed the whole character of the match and that, at the finish, Inman was once more hopelessly defeated. Smith is not the champion and when he played off with Newman for the first prize in the big professional tournament a short time ago, he was beaten. But despite the old player who extols the past there it little doubt that Smith is the greatest billiard player the game has produced. Again this season he has decided not to enter for the championship, backing up Inman in his protest against the conditions under which the event is decided. Both want the matches to be decided in a big hall where the receipts may reach the maximum amount. The authorities, on the other hand, insist that the championship shall be played for in one of the small saloons regularly used for billiards, though experience has proved that it will not accommodate all who wish to attend the matches. There is no doubt a good reason why the authorities should take up this' attitude. They probably think it would be unfair if they should deny the trade this plum of the game. But very naturally the professionals want to get all that is possible out of the event and Smith and Inman refuse to support it.