There is probably no game in which more depends upon the physical fitness of its followers than the game of billiards.
When a man is feeling physically unfit he plays superlatively badly, and when he is feeling exceptionally well he plays in a manner that surprises himself and his friends and that not infrequently paralyzes his opponent.
In the old days of billiards this need for extreme physical fitness by contestants on great occasions was, perhaps, more fully recognized than it is at the present day. The middle of the last century represented a less luxurious age and the conditions accompanying the match were, in some respects at least, of a more nerve-racking nature. Instead of the successive strokes being made in the midst of "a silence that can be felt," as is now invariably the case, they were accomplished to the accompaniment of betting shouts and of loudly-expressed remarks of approval or of derision. Thus we find T. Taylor, in his "Reminiscences" of his match with Stanley, saying:— After the preliminaries of weighing the balls, testing the table, etc., had been gone through, the game commenced, and from the start I took a good lead, but some of the rough element, who were backing Stanley, seeing that they looked like losing their money, commenced "ramping," and tried all sorts of dodges to put me off; and when a professional player, named Stenning, offered a pound to half-a-crown on me, remarking that it was just to pay his cab fare home, it was a signal for a row. They stopped the game and threatened to throw Stenning out of the window.
Not being used to this sort of thing, I was rather unsettled, and Stanley succeeded in putting in a couple of good breaks and made the game 927 all. Then he got position for the spot and finished the game with a 73 break.
It is needless to say that I was very much cut up at being beaten in this way. My backer was also very much annoyed, not at losing his money—he was too good a sportsman for that—but he said he considered that I had been fairly ramped out of the game.
Of a later match (his first with the elder Cook for money), we find Taylor saying:— I always made it a custom, when I had an important match for money on, to go in for a certain course of training, such as plenty of walking out of doors. The benefit I used to derive from this was incalculable, and I always turned up for my engagement as fit as the proverbial fiddle.
It had such a beneficial effect on my nerves that I believe if the house had fallen down during the game it would not have put me off my play, and I owe to this practice in a great measure my success in pulling many of the games that I did out of the fire.
If good health and steady living, plus outdoor exercise and constant practice, bring a billiard player into fine condition, it follows that inattention to health and exercise, and, above all, intemperance of any kind must have the opposite effect in a marked degree, and many have been the tragedies of the billiard table in this respect. Naturally brilliant players have, again and again, positively stupefied their friends and supporters by their less than mediocre performances when suffering from the lassitudes that so surely follow indiscreet indulgence and pathetic alternations of success and failure have taken the place of the former consistently meritorious exhibitions.
It is not, however, on the extremes of fitness and decadence that we were proposing to dwell in this article, but rather on the great necessity that there is that everyone who loves the game of billiards and desires to do himself justice when playing should carefully cultivate that which tends to serenity of mind and fitness of body, whilst equally avoiding whatever is likely to disturb these desirable conditions.
Games have been lost times out of number as a consequence of the most trifling physical causes. A wrangle shortly before commencing; an indiscreet meal; lack of punctuality and consequent fussing and hurrying; pre-occupation with regard to outside matters; and even such things as tight boots or an uncomfortable collar have all helped—and sometimes not inconsiderably— in the losing of a game.
To set against conditions such as these there have been quite extraordinary results arising out of a condition of perfect health and comfort. The present writer especially remembers one such game with a friend with whom he usually ran pretty even. This friend had just returned from a summer holiday, in the course of which he had lived, as he said, almost the life of a savage on the downs and by the sea in a remote country part. He was bronzed with the weather, in perfect health, and in the best and happiest of moods. Saying that he had not seen a billiard table for a month and expected that he would play a rotten game, he at once settled down to such play as he had never shown before, and has probably not accomplished since. In less than a quarter of an hour, and in his fourth innings he passed the first hundred, and, whilst making no considerable breaks, played with such confidence and consistency that the game of 250 was over in less than three-quarters of an hour, and whilst the writer, playing his normal game, had barely turned his first hundred. Another somewhat similar occasion the writer can call to mind. A friend came in fresh from tennis and wearing his flannels and tennis shoes. After a good wash and brush-up in the bathroom, and still in flannels and with sleeves rolled up as for tennis, he started a game of billiards, and nothing seemed to come amiss to him. Certainly, he played the game of his life; and the reason could only have been the perfect bodily and mental fitness that he was enjoying for the time being.