Force has always preceded science, and hence it is that the billiard player—amateur or professional—does not exist who did not begin by striking the ball too hard. It is equally true that as a player's game improves his striking becomes gentler, until finally he discovers that extreme screw or forcing effects can be achieved with less expenditure of power than was formerly deemed by him to be necessary to produce half such a result.
The Billiard Monthly is not addressed to those amateurs whose boast it is that they "strike hard and trust in providence." Such travesties of billiard players sometimes score freely by the aid of flukes, and it is inevitable that they should do so. The ball may strike a cushion a yard from the intended pocket, but there are still five pockets left, and the ball is travelling (or, in the case of a smashing cannon, all three balls are laden) with enough velocity to visit the neighbourhood of all of them.
It must also be conceded that this class of play frequently leaves good position, and the present writer remembers an occasion when a friend of his made a 40 break consisting entirely of single shot play.
But even allowing for this unrighteous and somewhat exasperating state of affairs, the gentle stroke, with the free and unfettered cue swing, is the play to adopt, and the points in its favour are (1) that the balls are kept more together, and (2) that much less, both physically and from the point of view of nerve tension, is taken out of the striker.
Watch a professional in top-of-the-table play. By low cueing and proper touch and strength he makes slow screws, which displace the balls only a few inches, whereas harsher treatment would send them all over the table. Note his middle pocket play and his top pocket forcers. He only uses half the strength that is usually applied, and the balls respond beautifully. He does not bang the balls as though he has a grudge against them, but as though he loves them, and is merely gently, but firmly, asking them to do his bidding.
When George Gray is playing the middle pocket losers, the spectators feel sure each time that the red ball will not come low enough—it seems to be coming so gently. But there is a life in it that has not been battered and crushed out of it by rude contact, and it gets to its goal all right.
The over-flogging of either billiard balls or race horses is a mistake.