Letters from England/Cambridge and Oxford

Players take a lag shot to determine who goes first. Jordan Spieth walks out of the trees along the 18th fairway after hitting a recovery shot during the third round of the Masters. Tennis, for instance, when you first fail to win a short chase, or your opponent keeps on serving nicks; billiards, when your ball is always under a cushion, or the balls dead safe time after time; cricket, when an umpire has given you out by a mistake of judgment-all these are trials, and they form part of the discipline of life. A great player-I may say a very great player-once told me that he had been unable to drive off the tee to his satisfaction for no less a period than four years-this player must have been more than human if to a greater or less degree he was not during all that time in an important match troubled with nerves when he took his stand on the tee. Set such a man on a putting-green with a putter and three or four balls, and he will very likely putt as well as the best professional; ask him to drive or play a brassey and he will be nowhere.

It is common knowledge what immense results have followed the introduction, some twenty years ago, of the Four Three-quarter System. The man of thirty in a few years will very likely develop into a really bad putter, not because he has not the skill-for he proved his skill when a beginner-but because he has learnt the terrors of putting, and his skill is overpowered by his nerves. His attentions were evidently not welcome to Mr. Gibbon, who daily grew more and more nervous and irritable, and had the appearance of a man whom something disquieted. If strength or the consideration of strength be the chief cause of nervousness, billiards ought therefore to be more of a test of nerve than golf. To get the strength of every green fixed in your mind is difficult for any man, for a nervous man well-nigh impossible. If you watch an amateur billiard-player in a handicap before a crowd, you will soon see whether he is nervous by the way he judges the strength. There was no chance for him to overhear any conversation, for he was always sent out of the way when the two were closeted together.

The hideous feeling of discomfort that comes over a player when he has topped his ball and made a deep hole in it, the terrible persistency with which ball after ball is sliced, the missing of one or two really short putts, the bad luck that attends him when putting really well, the way the hole is missed by a tenth of an inch, the frequent bad lies-all these combine to make life a burden. Each red ball when pocketed remains in the pocket, while the colours when pocketed, as long as any reds remain on the table, are placed on their respective spots. One of the white balls (plain or spot) serves as the cue ball for each player, what is billiards the red ball and other white ball serving as his object balls. One man insists on having his caddie and everybody he may be playing with, fixed behind his back and nowhere else-on the absurd ground, I suppose, that if they take up their position in any other spot they catch his eye. If you get out, well you have no further opportunity of getting nervous till your second innings comes round, and under no circumstances ought a bowler to be nervous, as one bad ball may always be redeemed by a wicket next ball.

Basic Play Each turn is called a ‘break’ and consists of a series of strikes of the cue ball that come to an end when a player makes a non-scoring strike or a foul stroke. There are three ways of scoring: (1) the losing hazard, or loser, is a stroke in which the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (2) the winning hazard, or pot, is a stroke in which a ball other than the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (3) the cannon, or carom, is a scoring sequence in which the striker’s cue ball contacts the two other balls successively or simultaneously. Take a stroke of eighty yards and one of forty, the mashie or some sort of lofted iron would be used for both these shots; and yet a player knows that at one distance he has a good chance of making a good stroke, at the other distance his heart goes into his boots. The short answer to this question is practice, but there is a bit more beyond just being really good at pool and finding the perfect cue that is required of an aspiring professional pool player.