Billiard Skill on the Links.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XVI, 17 October 1903, Page 2

Billiard Skill on the Links.

Wiison P. Foss is the American amat< nr champion billiard player. He has attained a degree of skill in the game raiely attained by amateurs, and. needless to say. is extremely fond of it. But much as he likes billiards he likes golf better, and therein he resembles more than one good amateur billiard player wno has found the allurements of the links more seductive than the soft chimes of the ivories. To the fact that there are points of similarity in gulf and billiards -noticeable to those who take to the former after becoming proficient at the latter —points in which the two pastimes are akin. Mr Foss says his billiard training helped him not a little when it came to golf. But golf, he says, is of no help in playing billiards. So golf i* indebted to billiards. ’’The phase of golf in which it is like billiards.” said the amateur cue champion the other day. *’is the putting. I discovered that the practised eye and wrist which were acquired at the billiard tabb* helped me out a good deal on the

putting green. In putting you need, most of all. judgment of force and speed, and this same quality is indispensable in playing billiards well. The control over the wrist and other parts of the arm, which comes from long experience in gathering in the caroms, comes in very handy in gauging the force and speed necessary to drive a golf ball into the hole. 1 think every billiard player who has taken to golf has found this to be the case. •‘Judgment and speed count more in billiards than good eyesight, and the same is true in putting. You’d be astonished at what a little part, comparatively. eyesight cuts in billiards. course, one has to have fair eyesight, but then the ability to put on just the right amount of force is more important. ”he billiard player glances at the cue K 11. then glances up to the object ball pist as he is to shoot, and then relies on his judgment in making the shot and getting the position. One of our best amateur billiard players is Joe Knapp. Mr Knapp is a strong golf player, and. moreover, an extra good putter.

”In comparing the two games there , one thing to be said in favour of biliards. and that is that it is by far tin more scientific game of the two. It i a much harder game to master than gob I venture to say that in golf there ai two or three hundred players good er, ough to play in a tournament for firhonours and fifty or sixty goed enoug l to have a reasonable chance to win; ye bow many are there who are good en High to have an equal chance in bill:' ards? Of all the billiard players in th world to-day there are only six or sev en who are in the first class. The anut teur golf championship last year wa won by a young man who finished lain the qualifying round. There is n <uch clement of chance in one’s winnin a billiard tournament. In billiards, th chances would be much more in favon of *he best player winning from the out set. so that 1 should say ability tell n:.rie in billiards than in golf. *‘A noted golfer once sain mat bis va to win was to capture the first ’icb* an then never let his opponent catch up wi; him. In citing the case of the plam

who won the championship after being last in the qualifying round I don’t mean that the player who is behind in billiards has less chance to catch up than in golf,

but that the better player is more likely to win. While I would be more likely to beat Slosson at billiards than I would lie to beat Travis at golf, yet I could i»ive Travis one-half in a game of billiards

and beat him. .which he could not do to me at golf; yet playing even he would sitrelv beat me a hundred straight contests at golf.

Speaking of Travis, he is one illustration that billiards is more scientific than o-olf. He began to play golf about seven vears ago. and in that time he reached the top. No such progress could be made in billiards in the same length of

ime. The only similar case to Trais’ in billiards is that of Ives, the great st billiard genius of them all, and he

hemin playing when he was a boy. I’ve heard it maintained that golf required more skill than billiards, and in support of that contention was cited a feat which Travis is able to accomplish. The feat consists of lifting a golf ball straight over a tree seventy-five feet high, the ball being placed ten feet outside a per pendicular line from the extreme edge of the branches, and the ball landing on the .same distance from and on the other side of the tree. Such a shot might be called a stunt or a freak shot. Stunts just as surprising, and even more so. are made in billiards. Neither the one in golf nor those in billiards are of any practical value in playing the game. “In both games a common mistake on the part of the player is trying to do too much —not keeping within one’s ability. It is better to know what you can do and try to do it than trying things that are beyond you. Tn both games, also, the player finds the implements with which he is to accomplish results at rest when it comes his turn to play, and all he has to do is to get up there and do it. Nothing depends on his opponent—everything on himself.

"I have found both golf and billiards to be splendid means of getting recreation. but for all that billiards isn’t to be compared with golf in driving dull care away. The joyful sensation of driving a golf ball and having it land just where I figured it would, which doesn’t happen often, is something I never have experienced in billiards. If I had to give up .me or the other for good I would give up billiards without a moment's hesitation. The person whose privilege it is to plav golf ought to bo thankful for that privilege every time he gets out .m the links. Tam mighty fond of the game, fonder of it than t ever was of billiard-.”—‘New York Sun.”