BILLIARDS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 8, 23 February 1910, Page 11

BILLIARDS.

.SPEEDING THE CITE-BALL.

(By

H. W. Stevenson.)

There are other means of varying the pace of the cue-ball than by striking it at different stengt>s of stroke. It is no secret process, but just a changing of the common middle of the ball contact (or as near to that elusive little point

as the average player is able to get his cut-tip on to), above or below that mark. The one shot is known as “topping” the ball and increasing its pace, the other, "checking” or "dragging,” and decreasing the pace. Both motions play a most prominent part in good billiards. They have their special ranges and uses. The better the player, the more he is able to dispense with these alterations of stroke and depend, by bis nicety of touch, upon the central ball contacts to alter the force and run of his ball. But he, too, is bound to use the accelerating and retarding effects, especially if he is out of practice or out of form. The ball does for him what he cannot with any certainty do for himself. If you and I were able—which, let me say at once, we are not—to strike a ball at one given strength, first, in the centre, next, nicely aibove this, and, again, at an equal distance below the centrepoint, a marked difference would be noticed in its length of travel. Say you played a central or plain ball from the “D” up to the pyramid-spot (that midway mark between the eent re-epot and the top cushion), with just space enough to reach there. A stroke above the centre. if you could strike the ball with exactly the same force, would- carry it as far as the top cushion. But struck at its lowest strikable limit, that is, below the centre, provided the identical degree of power was put. into the stroke as sen: the bail to the pyramid spot and the top cushion respectively, by “plain ball” and

"top” motions, it would stop as far short of the pyramid spot as the “topped” ball had exceeded that mark. This, I think, should be pretty clear. It applies to

every sort of ball movement all over the table, the high striking increasing, the low striking decreasing, and the middle or plain ball striking acting as the happy medium between the two effects.

It is in the “run-through" and every description of stroke where the cue-ball has to get up speed quickly, that the “topping” shot has its beet uses. A ball struck above the centre will run further and faster than from any other contact of the cue-tip. It commences to revolve at the very moment it feels the tip against it. For this reason, there is nothing to be compared with the “topped” ball for following on after, and, as it were, "through” an object ball. Making more revolutions than if it were struck centrally, it gains the maximum of speed at the minimum expenditure of force. The "topped" ball is a headstrong, impulsive thing. It will cling to a cushion, or keep leaving and returning there in a wriggling, serpentine movement which has its especial province in the play. The curly masse arises from the sauie cause. But that stroke belongs to the higher flights of billiards, which we are not yet touching. There is really no limit to the eccentric revolutions that a “topped” ball may perform. (Siief of al), however, to the average billiardist, is the fact of ita increasing the pace and run of a boll in the more delicately played shots

From the middle of the hall one expects power, true running, -and general simplicity of detail. It is, indeed, the "plain-ball” —the term which is given to

it in expert circles. And it is as good to know and appreciate as it is, theoretically, simple. In practice the average player will mostly do everything else but plant the cue-tip fully (as he should) upon the shimmering centre point of his ball. It is really not an easy thing to do, simple as the action would appear to be. The professionals vary in their styles of taking aim, some aiming direct, where they wish the cue tip to strike, and others aim at the very base of the ball, where it rests upon the cloth. These la-t hold to an old-fashioned theory that with thy circle of ivory tapering away, as it does, to almost the pin’s point that it rests upon, the centre is more easily found that aiming at the broad face of the ball. There is some truth in the contention, but what is gained in a central aim is lost in accuracy of stroke, for the eue head has to ■be brought upwards with the swing of the arm, an action that cannot, in the long run, compare in effectiveness with the direct aim and piston-rod swing of the cue.

A "topped” ball gathers speed instantaneously, or "gets into its running straight away” las sprinters say), because it commences to revolve with the blow from the cue. It is just like a bicycle wheel: the nearer the driving power is to the top, the quicker and longer the turn over. A ball struck at the centre does not immediately start to revolve. It skids or slides a certain distance along the doth, according to the force of the stroke. This sliding movement lasts only for a bare fraction of a second, but this makes all the difference to its after run. Not only that, for should the ball come in contact at all fully with an object ball during the sliding process, it can make no headway. Try a elose run-through with a middle of the ball stroke, and notice how dead the cue ball falls up against the object-ball. Then place the -two balls the same distance apart, and strike the playing ball nicely and crisply above the centre. Mark the different effect now produced. Its quick revolutions carry it onwards and after the object-ball. The turning over and over reminds one almost of a screw boring its way in. Striking the cue-ball below the centre produces a motion" known as "drag” It imparts an under current that the bail does not easily shake off. Sent forward by the force of the cue, it is, nevertheless, trying to turn backwards by the reverse revolutions the under stroke intends to provide it with. Confused between the forward run it is making and the backward inclination given by the stroke, the ball does neither of these things in the first few feet of its career. It makes a comparatively extended skidding or sliding movement, which can, unlike the plain ball’s preliminary skid, be seen with the eye. A slow ball with "drag” will skid or slide anything from a foot to two feet. But a ■ fast "dragged” ball— -ay it is played from the "D"—will not begin to roil until it has passed the middle pocket line. All "screw.* "stun,” and simple "drag” shots have this same peculiarity. The three classes come within the general scope of below-the-eentre strikings, and each has its own particular uses and demands upon the player. The plain "drag” shot, however, has the virtue of so decreasing the speed of a fairly strongly played ball, that it excels as a medium for long-range positions where the balls have to be moved as littlg as possible. It further enables the player, in some degree, to correct the deviations of an untrue ball, which only goes astray when it rolls at all slowly. Running fast, or skidding along, while the "drag” has got hold of it. the "crooked” ball must move in a fairly straight line from the cue. This is a hint which should not be overlooked.

As the alteration of the speed in strokes forms the essence of billiardplaying. these “topping.” “middle ball,” ami •‘bottom” (the general term applied to ‘‘drag”) strikings will help the amateur a good deal if he experiments with them and gets the idea of the theory fairly planted in his head.