In billiard playing, as in golf, and all other, games that are played with a stationary ball, much depends upon the attention that is given at the very outset—and preferably under professional or other competent supervision, to the primary act of striking. How the cue or club is held and swung, the position of the body, the direction of the eyes, and the estimation of strength, are bedrock essentials and far and away more important than any attempts, whether successful or unsuccessful, at actual playing. No sane tutor either of billiards or golf would permit a student to hit a ball before he had learned how to hold and swing his cue or club, and no student, who intended to excel, would dream of attempting to drive or to score before he had mastered the elementary principles apart from which any success worth having is impossible of attainment.
Yet, if those who seriously study billiard or golf essentials at the outset may be reckoned by hundreds those who plunge blindly and crudely into these games are to be counted in thousands. Let any public billiard room bear its testimony to the accuracy of this assertion. Let the majority of the players be watched and almost every possible billiard error will be found to be illustrated in the course of a hundred up. An object ball will be missed altogether, proving that the player's body position was wrong or that he had raised his cue and caused the cue ball to swerve without adjusting his aim for the emergency; the white object ball will be lost in a pocket or behind the baulk line, proving that the striker had not taken the line of its probable direction or had played too hard or too gently; the cue ball will be stabbed or stunned when light or high cueing is essential, proving that no thought had ever been given to cue ball rotation; and to the "rotten, rotten, rotten," of the striker himself the onlooker will feel inclined mentally to apply an emphatic "hear, hear."
Under these circumstances a few lines under the head of "Things That Matter in Billiards" devoted to simple and profitable methods of initial practice may be found to be not unacceptable to many readers of The Billiard Monthly.
There is only space to consider, in the present article, three points, and these are: Cueing, strength, and ball direction.
The fundamentals of stance and cue swing may be learned without balls, without a table, and even without a cue.
Let the left hand be placed flat On any table or bench with the fingers and thumb together and the knuckles be raised.
That is the bridge, and the cue will pass over the knuckle of the thumb, the tip of which may be raised a little if preferred. The next thing to observe is that the right foot, with the leg straight but easy, is in a straight line behind the hand and that the left foot, a little out to the left, is pointing towards the hand. Now the right elbow is to be raised until the upper arm is exactly horizontal and the fore-arm hanging perpendicularly from it. Meanwhile the face is broadside to the hand, with both eyes in equal focus, and thus, hand, chin, elbow, and the ball of the right foot occupy an identical straight line. If now a billiard ball were placed on the table nine inches in advance of the left hand and a cue, with its tip touching the ball were placed in the right hand in its state of pendulum suspension, the exact position at which the cue should be lightly held would be automatically discovered, and a little gentle swinging of the tip at equal distances behind and before the ball's imaginary position might be indulged in.
So much for the body position and cueing, and now for the vital question of strength. Numberless degrees of strength are used by indifferent players, but it is doubtful whether more than four or five are ever required, and these may be learned for all time by a little preliminary practice on a good full-size table. For the purposes of this article we will call them Nos. 1, 2, 3, and A strength, and make them correspond to a table length of travel of the cue ball, with one cushion intervening for each length. At the outset a chalk mark should be made six inches above the pyramid spot and the three balls placed in a line across the table at this point a few inches apart. No. 1 strength should bring the balls back to the baulk line off the baulk end cushion; No. 2 strength, played (with slightly more than "stringing" strength) from the baulk line should bring them again to the baulk line off the top and the baulk cushion; No. 3 strength to the same position after three cushion contacts; and No. 4 strength again to the baulk line after four cushion contacts. After the strokes have been perfected in order, they should be taken irregularly, and then the principle should be applied in the case of No. 1 to the cross top loser or the loser from the middle pocket to the spot; in the case of No. 2 to the in-off from the pyramid spot; in the case of No. 3 to the long in-off from the centre spot; and in the case of No. 4, to a forcing stroke into a top pocket. The extension of the same system and principle to other requirements and intended positionings would follow, as a matter of course until proper strength selection became instinctive and automatic.
There remains to be considered the question of ball direction, which is a great stumbling block with many amateurs.
Professionals develop a species of double-sight in this particular as the result of sustained observation and experience, but anyone who has never seen a billiard table can easily be shown how to forecast the run of an object ball. Such an one would only need to remember that the ball must take a direct course from the point at which it is struck and that the aim must always be twice as for from the centre of the ball as viewed direct, as is the distance from such centre of the part of the ball to be struck. Thus, when the point to be struck is half an inch from the centre as viewed from the position of the cue ball, the aim must be at the edge, whereas if the part to be struck is the extreme edge, the aim must be an inch wide of the edge, and so on.