I might mention at the start that I took to the game as a duckling takes to water. My father kept the Northgate Hotel, Bradford, and consequently I enjoyed opportunities of learning and practising billiards from my earliest youth.
At 10 years of age I could play a little, and was regarded by my own kith and kin as a wonder; but I never fancied myself sufficiently to enter for the Amateur Championship until well on the shady side of 30.
When I did venture on that course most of my friends were convinced that I had taken the plunge too late, "when my form was rapidly waning," as they put it. To tell the truth, I do not think many amateurs will find their best form at 36 years of age, if they have not found it earlier in life. An aspirant to championship honours must have confidence in himself, or he will not stand much of a chance.
I was often advised to enter for the tournament, but do not altogether regret having delayed my debut until 1904.
Quite apart from actual results, I am certain that success at the game brings more real satisfaction to the old than to the youthful player. To enjoy billiards properly you must have made a study of it, which, of course, only matured exponents can possibly have done. "Youth will tell," people say, but my experience is that it is not always the case in billiard-playing. One obvious reason is that there is far more in the game than can be learnt in boyhood. My own success I attribute to study, even more than to practice.
Being practically self-taught, I had to do something to improve my game in the days when there was no particular object in view.
When one becomes amateur champion, however, he never lacks anything in the shape of good schooling. If he likes, he can figure in exhibition matches two or three times a week throughout a season, chiefly at social or political clubs. He meets good professional talent, too, which does not affect his amateur status, inasmuch as a club is a private house so long as no money is taken at the doors. This is the finest possible training an amateur can desire, and it did me good service when I was getting ready for the big events.
George Nelson, the Yorkshire professional ex-champion, put me through most of my paces, though I met many more good men, and learnt something from all of them. Once I was invited to play Stevenson a three-days' match, but, much to my disappointment, the Billiard Association vetoed the arrangement. I do not know how many points I was to receive from Stevenson, nor how many I expected to score, but I know that the loss of a valuable billiard lesson was very annoying. Watching a great player from a seat in the benches is quite different to actually opposing him, so far as picking up wrinkles goes. Still, if a man is endowed with billiard brains he can improve himself greatly by closely watching the methods of such men as Stevenson, Roberts, and Diggle.
Summing up my own experiences of billiards, I should say that proficiency at the game is difficult of attainment for the average amateur. Few men can spare the time required for regular practice, and then there is the coaching, without which little can be done. Position, cueing.
the correct game to play, must all be learnt from some of the past masters, or the training will be in vain. There is a right way, as well as a wrong way to play billiards, and it is an admitted fact that the right way rarely appears to the untutored intelligence.
There are many amateurs capable of making a hundred break, but their knowledge of the science of the game is limited. When the balls run unkindly these players have a very bad time indeed, and are quite at a loss to understand it. Century breaks are very nice but when they come very rarely, they say little for a man's ability. It is the average which tells. I mean, of course, average breaks through a fairly long game.
In the amateur championship tournament an average of 10 would carry a competitor a long way and would make him a winner in some seasons, though both E. C. Breed and Major Fleming did much better than that. The figure looks modest on paper, but it wants a lot of doing on a standard table and "in the pit," as many an aspirant has discovered to his cost. I have averaged as much as 25 in an exhibition match of 700 up, but this was on an easy, fast board, with everything going my way. It is astonishing how the conditions affect one's form at this greatest of all games.
Temperament, too, has a lot to do with success or failure A player who wants to become a champion must have that kind of temperament which is not disturbed by anything Then there is a vast difference in tables and implements generally. It means a big handicap in many cases when a novel kind of cloth or a different set of balls from what one is used to has to be played with and I am afraid that amateurs generally do not receive over-much consideration in these matters, the idea apparently being that anything is good enough for them.
Edward Diggle and Cecil Harverson were due at Melbourne on June 10. They played at the English Club in Colombo on the way out, and on June 17 they entered upon a fortnight's match at Messrs. Heiron and Smith's hall, Sydney.
The annual match between Jack Mannock's head markers —George, of the Hotel Victoria, and James, of the Bedford Head Hotel—was decided at the Hotel Victoria recently. James failed to maintain his form, and was beaten by 190 in a game of 500 up. The best breaks by the winner were 40, 30, 27, 24 (twice), and 23, and by James 38, 37, 28, and 26.
It is suggested by a leading billiard critic that Newman and Smith should each endeavour to correct what is regarded as a source of weakness in his play. Newman does not keep his forearm vertical and Smith bends both knees. But the elder Peall's forearm, when he made over 3,000 by microscopically accurate striking, was far out of the vertical, and both Diggle and Gray bend both knees. Changes from an ingrained style are sometimes disastrous.