BILLIARDS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 26, 30 June 1909, Page 58

BILLIARDS.

By

AN EXPERT.

HAT is bound to take rank as V ■ I the moet important billiard match of the 1908-9 season,

which is being longer drawn out than any of its predecessors, is due to close to-day (Saturday), at the Grand Salon, Soho-square. The admitted cham-

pion of English billiards, H. W. StevenBon, and the champion of the Billiard (Association, Melbourne Inman, met on the terms of the London professional tournament, viz., Stevenson conceding the long start of 2000 points in the week’s game of 9000 points up. Upon the issue there depended the first prize of the tournament, a cool £ 100, and, what is of greater consequence to either player, the enhancing or upholding of well-won reputations. High-class billiards, such as they have both keenly and strenuously played, is, indeed, good to watch. If the scope of the Rimington-Wilson code of rules, which precludes the giving of a safety-miss or coup except when the cue-ball is “in hand,” and the two object balls lie within the baulk area., cuts away the old series of defensive misses, it tends to a brighter and faster game. The double-lwiulk and single-baulk, supported by some, played safely, are the greatest obstacles that one player mdp

impose upon the other. Everything tends towards break-making and the minimising of those tedious bouts of safetymisses which at one period disfigured the best games and tired out their patrons.

fn every respect then, this extra and (deciding heat of the tournament, caused by. the return of five wins and one defeat made by both .competitors during the course of the allotted round of games, has proved worthy both in a competitive and spectacular sense of the occasion. Stevenson has upheld his championship claims in the most convincing manner possible. He has broken through the safety tactics of hrs opponent, who made the most of what the conditions left to him. The audacity of his stroke-play has been simply remarkable. Time and again the balls have seemed to be lying safe from even his enterprising skill. Then some brilliant cannon or hazard has cleared the way for a break. Onee he has had the balls under his control the points have rattled out of them at a wonderful pace. In several sittings the allotted quota of 750 points have come in a little over the hour. This is irresistible progress. The beauty of his play has lain in the simplicity of his sequence of stroke-arrangements. There has been no sot method of scoring, but un evident desire and determination to keep the balls going by the simplest of scoring means. In their turn, Stevenson has tended to the close-cannone, to the legitimate top-of-Uie-table game, with Its

alternating cannons and winning hazards, to the losing hazards from the red ball’ (one series of 39 hazards showing his skill in this direction), to the varying changes of position, and every “leave” with the hand of a master. Seldom at a loss to try a scoring-shot, he has pro-

vided a great example of opening out the game by an unquenchable initiative. His play, in short, has represented billiard genius, as distinguished from studiously acquired powers, in its highest form. Beside his powerful rival Inman has been heavily overshadowed. He is quite the most promising of the younger generation of professional cuemen, a player •of the most stubborn kind, and a very doughty opponent, but he has many lessons to learn before he approaches the level of Stevenson. If confidence and pluck could win him his games Inman would already be wearing the championship mantle, which he so openly covets, and which should, in the fulness of time, come to him. “In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as failure,” is a quotation that has been most happily applied to this determined matchplayer. A defeat or an impending one only serves to stimulate him with a desire for another trial, or to snatch a victory at the eleventh hour. No more earnest and enduring young man has ever trod the billiard ladder of fame. Starting at the lowest rung, and only making his way upwards in the face of such impediments, such natural disadvantages as would have caused any less enduring spirit to have speedily made the descent, Inman is now within very measurable distance of the top rung. He had hoped in this match to prove how near he is to the championship qualification. To have watched the play this week was to witness an indomitable personality struggling against adversity, and a superior scoring force. Binding his form within the first five minutes of the game being commenced, Stevenson drew and drew upon the 2900 points balance stored to his rival in such heavy drafts that the last of them had been called out when the game was called “3194 all!” With praiseworthy tenacity Inman fought bard to regain the lead. He fell some 300 or 400 points behind, but, contesting every inch of the w’ay, he passed to the front again. First one score-peg and then the other was ahead. The crisis of the game had been reached. Not all the willingness of Inman could, hew’ever, enable him to live long on equal terms with the human scoring machine he was opposed to. Soon the score-pegs drifted apart again. The course of the game seemed to favour Stevenson. But this was only an impression bred by liis almost constant presence at the table. The balls appeared to favour him, an idea prompted by his greater command over them. Inman never seemed happy in his efforts. There ■was not the same happy combination about his strokes, nor the precision and sot character about them that marked the displays of his opponent. He was, though, only so ineffective by compart-

son with the touches of the master hand which had preceded his own scoring attempts. Some of Stevenson’s strokes deserve especial notice. They eannot look so attractive in the black-and-white of the diagrams as in the clear-cut white-and-red movements upon the billiard table and the animated scene around it. Yet the five shots shown may be taken as fairly representative among dozens of others of the champion’s manner of dealing with uncommon positions. The No. 1 shot is a legacy left to billiards by the one-time popular game of bagatelle. As a rule, an involuntary six shot has left the cue-ball in hand, red upon the billiard-spot, and the object-white close to the top cushion, directly behind the red. The cannon may be played from the back = ball—the object-white—by clipping it and the cushion simultaneously, and using right or left “side,” according to which way the cue-ball is directed. But this method is no safer than the old fashioned shot used by Stevenson, w’io played straight up at and full on to the red from the middle of the D. The clash of the cue-ball on the red, the immediately and duller sound accompanying the meeting of the object-balls (the red being driven on to the ball behind it), and the smart "way the white clears itself from the red and finds the oncoming cue-ball, makes for a one-two-three sound and a pretty shot. No. 2 shot illustrates a clever overcoming of a covered position, the three balls being in line. Stevenson opens up a pathway to the pocket for the red ball by playing it on to the top cushion; from there it takes the left side of the object-white, and is so deflected into the pocket—a variation of the cushion losing hazard. Meanwhile, the object-white is knocked down the side cushion to run up against the cueball for a cannon. No. 3 shot shows another covered position at much closer range. The cueball is given strong running “side,” the idea being to play at such strength and at sueh a degree of contact upon the first object-ball as will send the second objeet-ball to the further cushion. It is caught by the faster-running cue-ball as it comes away from there. Stevenson is especially expert at these little stroke combinations, as he has shown on many occasions this week.

No. 4 stroke is a daring double-baulk. Tn holing his opponent’s ball with a long-range shot, Stevenson had left this awkward position. He thought out the best solution to the problem quite lengthily—for him—and then set himself

to play this splendid stroke. The ball was cut around the upper half of the table, and it entered the baulk enclosure via the left baulk cushion, some time after the more easily steered cue-ball had located itself therein. No. 5 shot represents a covered position of the most awkward-looking kind, bub which gives way before the experienced hand with marked certainty and suddenness. A run-through shot with plenty of pocket, played as though the second! objeet-ball was off the table, will usually provide a losing hazard. The objectballs collide, and they split apart, leaving a clear passage for the cue-ball to find the pocket—a delightful and good billiard stroke. <