BILLIARDS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17882, 25 June 1926, Page 6

BILLIARDS

CLAUDE FALCONER.

By RISO LEVI. Author of “Billiards: The Strokes of the Game ” and “ Billiards for the Million." (Copyright.) Claude Falkiner was born at Featherstone, Yorkshire, on July 11, 1885, and has thus entered his forty-first year. He began his billiards at his father’s club in South Kirby when he was about twelve. From the age of fourteen to seventeen he worked in a coal jmine, but he continued to play billiards and progressed so rapidly that whilst still in his early teens he was constantly reaching three figures, and by the time he was seventeen even a 200 break from his cue was no rare event. A few years later—in February, 1907—he made his first five hundred—a break of 525. Falkiner's best break in England is 870, and he has run into the ninth hundred at home on four occasions. All these breaks were made with ivory balls. And just as Stevenson, as far back as 1912, showed how much easier it is for a great professional to compile great breaks with composition balls—in one week's play in England with these balls Ste\*enson made breaks of 523, 729, 1016 and 689 unfinished—so, too, Falkiner showed in no uncertain manner how the manufactured article suits his billiards, for in the few games which he played in Australia on his first visit there, in addition to making a break of 821, he. twice beat his record, with great breaks of 965 and 1001. HOW IVORY BALL PLAYERS DELUDE THEMSELVES. Many ivory bail players delude themselves into believing that it is only red ball ~plav which is rendered easier or, as I prefer to put it, less difficult with composition balls, but if you were to ask Falkiner and Stevenson, or even Smith and Newman, these players would tell you that good composition balls render break-buildir.g of any kind less difficult than it is with ivories. Falkiner did not make his great Australian breaks by red ball play—he never plays the red ball game if he can help it, and on the last occasion on which I was in his company he jocularly told me that onlv- a player with the brains of a rabbit ever lays himself out to make breaks solely off the red ball—but by the same methods which he makes use of with ivories, viz., principally top-of-the-table play and nursery cannon play. A FASCINATING PLAYER. Although both Smith and Newman can give Falkiner a good few thousands in a game extending over a fortnight, there is no more fascinating player to watch than the little Yorkshireman. Indeed, if I were asked to classify our leading players according to artistic merit I should undoubtedly place Falkiner well in the van. To see him at the table once is to want to see him play again and again. I have watched Falkiner play times out of number, and the more I see of him the more am I impressed with the poetry of his billiards. Falkiner is supreme in the art of nursery cannon play. Newman, to mention only one other professional, also txcels at this fascinating branch of the game, and when you watch him make a string of forty or fifty of these delicate little strokes you might well believe that the limit of skill and refinement in this department of the game, which looks so easy, but which in reality is so intensely difficult and which takes years of assiduous practice to master, has surely been reached by him. But when you see Falkiner running the balls along the top cushion you realise that, great as Newman is in retaining position for a long sequence of cannons, Falkiner is still greater. I remember seeing Falkiner make a run cf 122 close cannons a year or two ago, and a very long sequence calls for infinitely more skill and refinement of touch thaji was the case before the rule limiting the number of cannons by a direct ball-to-ball contact to 25 came into force. As a matter of fact this break of 122 cannons is a long way from Falkiner's record. He has, on numerous occasions, had runs of 130 nursery cannons, one of which numbered 16& —this constitutes a record—and two others 157. THE GULF BETWEEN AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS. After watching Falkiner for an hour or so when he is at his best, one comes

awav with a feeling of wonderment at his deft manipulation of the balls, and at the supreme skill displayed by this great billiards artist during a run of close cannons. If one happens to be a good player one's self—judged by amateur standards—one realises how feeble one’s own play is when compared with that of this great artist of the cue, and what a wide and unbridgeable gulf yawns between even the very" best amateurs and the leading professionals. The ordinary hundred-upper thinks he has done very well when he gets to game in half-an-hour or forty minutes, and the capable amateur when he scores the requisite 100 points in twenty minutes, but how very fast Claude Falkiner is at his best may be realised from the following extraordinary fasttime performances standing to his credit:— 510 in nineteen minutes. 625 in twenty-five minutes. 750 in thirty-five minutes. Falkiner has also scored 86 points —by forty-three close cannons—in Imin 20sec at Moose Jaw, Canada. FALKINER’S HOBBIES. Most people believe that the only thing that a professional billiards player knows much about is how to play billiards. Yet had not Claude Falkiner taken up billiards as a profession he might have made a name as a man of letters. I have had many long conversations with him on various subjects quite unconnected with billiards, and from the very first I was struck with his eloquent way of putting things, his wide command of language his facile flow of just the right words, and the choice phrasing of his sentences without the slightest straining after effect. Indeed, I find a quiet conversation with Falkiner as interesting to me as watching him at the table, and this is saying a great deal. I know that Falkiner had begun life as a miner, and so when I got to know him well I took the liberty one day of asking him how he had managed to acquire such a thorough knowledge of the English language. And this was his reply, “ I have been a great reader of good books, and I have a very retentive memory.” This gifted player has two great hobbies, neither of which is, so far as I know, shared by any other professional billiards player. He is a great collector of postage stamps and also of antique silver. He is always ready to give many pounds for some rare stamp, and the last time I was with him in London he was on the look-out for an antique cream jug of a very rare design to complete a silver tea service which he possesses, and when he finds it he will be prepared to pay over so many pounds an ounce for it. It is thus evident that Claude Falkiner is very well up in many other things besides billiards.