This article is intended as a plea for the establishment by professionals of billiard classes, as distinguished from individual tuition. There are two drawbacks to private tuition as applied to the majority of billiard students. The first is that they are usually merely taught how to do certain strokes, without the precise why and wherefore of such strokes being imparted to them, and the second is that they are charged for each hour a larger amount than many of them can well afford to pay.
Let there, however, be no mistake. Not only is any intending player who has a pound or two to spare wise to take a few private or personal lessons from a good professional before he attempts to take up a cue, but he simply cannot, unless possessing an inborn genius for the essentials of the game, afford to do without such lessons. But it is our opinion that such lessons should be confined to three things, and after the intending player has been thoroughly grounded in these foundation methods and principles, a course of class tuition, combined with careful and painstaking practice alone, would, in our judgment, be the very best kind of education to which he could submit himself.
The three things that a professional—and it must be the right professional—should be requisitioned for at the outset are: (1) The positioning of the body; (2) the holding and supporting of the cue, and (3) the delivery of the stroke.
We say that the right professional should be consulted, and we say this advisedly, for, whilst there are many professionals whose stance, cue hold, and delivery are as technically perfect as they are graceful, there are others who do none correctly, but who, nevertheless, make their hundred breaks again and again, whilst still technically wrong all over. The explanation of this is that they devote such an enormous amount of time and attention to practice that they are able to create artificial substitutes for their otherwise faulty technique, but they never get into the front rank because, under the stress of serious encounters or adventitious happenings, their artificial standbys break down and they are reduced to the unfortunate condition in which they can do nothing right.
The player, whether amateur or professional, who has never learnt to stand right, to hold his cue right, or to deliver his cue right, can only make breaks by compensating with fuller or finer aim or with higher cueing for what is essentially wrong in his—at the outset—too quickly or wrongly acquired style. As an example of what we mean, we may suggest a simple test. The object ball shall be placed on the centre spot of the table, and the cue ball handed to half-a-dozen players in succession. There is only one line of correct aim for this stroke if the intention be to set up middle pocket play after the first stroke, yet it will be found that each of the six players has a different idea as to where the cue ball shall be placed in the D, as a careful marking with chalk of each positioning would prove.
Furthermore, the reason for this varying position would be at once detected by any expert who placed himself at the top end of the table in the direct line in which the cue was pointing when the stroke was made.
The reason for this variation in the aim is two-fold. The eyes may be looking sidewise along the cue, thus altering the focus, or the hand may be working either inside or outside of a plumb-line dropped from the elbow. The correcting of these two common faults, together with the right support of the cue with fingers and at the bridge, and the effortless and rhythmical swing of the cue are worth a guinea of any aspiring billiardists money.
Now we come to the class tuition, in which no student should be allowed to touch a cue, and to which no student should be admitted who had not previously acquired the proper stance, hold, and swing, which he must be prepared to demonstrate privately to the director of the class.
The first class lesson might fittingly be devoted to the middle-pocket in-offs, sometimes with the red ball only on the table and sometimes with the white object ball there also.
The reason for this is obvious. Although, as a rule, it is the game not to disturb two balls in order to make a cannon when an in-off continues to be easily on, the second ball is frequently so placed that a collision between the object balls must result as well as the in-off, and when this is the case—unless foreseen and provided for by gentler play —the nature of the next shot becomes a matter of sheer luck.
So that Lesson No. 1 would very profitably consist of explanations and demonstrations of the different contacts necessary for red ball guidance towards the centre of the table below the middle spot and to warnings against the treacherous kiss when the white is on the table. The point at which it might be necessary to bring the white into the scheme of play, and the best manner of accomplishing this, would also naturally fall under exposition.
Class Lesson No. 2 might usefully be devoted to the use and abuse of side, and here the extremely important wile of shifting the cue bodily one way or the other, instead of deflecting it, would be emphasized. The effective manner in which slow side can be substituted for force, either in pocket or cushion cannon play, would form the subject of many very pretty illustrations, and the modified aim that is necessary to neutralize the influence of the nap of the cloth or the enforced or intentional raising of the butt of the cue would prove equally interesting and instructive to the students.
For Lesson No. 3 the area of the demonstrations might conveniently and appropriately be transferred to the top of the table, first with the red ball alone and afterwards with the white placed just above it, and here it would quickly be discovered by the now pleased and gratified students that, just as the run-through in-off stroke is the backbone of the middle pocket game, so the gentle run-through cannon stroke is one of the most valuable aids in retaining the white ball near the spot and in directing the red towards the corner,