Famous Players and Their Bridges
On this page of The Billiard Player are given photographic reproductions of the bridges employed by famous billiard players of three continents—Mr. S. H. Fry, T. Newman, W. Smith, and M. Inman, of Great Britain; Mr. J. R. Hooper, of Australia; and Walker Cochran, of America. A study and comparison of these six bridges will be found to be interesting and educative.
Amateur Champion
In the first place the almost exact similarity of the bridges employed by Newman and Smith will be noted. It is a straightforward, easy bridge—a shade more tense than that of the late John Roberts, which was almost casual in its ease and in the apparently slight role allotted to the thumb, but a great deal less tense than those of Inman and Mr. Fry, each of whom puts a lot of weight on the root (or what nearly every billiard book that was ever written wrongly calls the ball) of the thumb of the bridge hand.
In our opinion this excessive turning over of the hand towards the thumb is quite unnecessary. It is much insisted upon in some instruction books, and George Gray, in his book, speaks almost with pride of the "hoof" that was formed at the lower knuckle of his left hand by the strong and constant pressure that he used in order to keep it down tightly on the table. Between this extreme and the wobbling of the cue hand about there is a wide margin, and no real advantage with regard to steadiness would seem to be gained by making the cue hand rigid as well as firm.
One great secret of the late John Roberts's successful and attractive play was his entire freedom from rigidity in the smallest detail of his attitude or pose. John Roberts with either his chin on his cue or his bridge hand turned over would not have been John Roberts at all, nor would he, in our opinion, have become anything approaching the billiard player that he was either in technical perfection or in attractiveness.
Of a necessarily different class from either of the two first pairs shown on this page are the bridges, masse and boucl&#eacute;e respectively, of Mr. J. R. Hooper and Walker Cochran.
Mr. Hooper is one of the few living amateurs who play the masse stroke with ease and confidence, and Cochran has a peculiar penchant for using the bouclée bridge even in making ordinary strokes. On the other hand, there are first-class players who rarely use the bouclée bridge even in making those special strokes in which its employment is regarded by others as essential to the exact work required.
The question of the bridge hand is one that we should like to see discussed in The Billiard Player. There is, for instance, the turning over of the hand to the right for screw strokes. This seems to us to be more applicable to side strokes than to screw strokes, or to side and screw strokes combined, as the alignment of the cue is necessarily altered. On the other hand the principle does not apply to side strokes played on the left side of the cue ball, and upon the whole we fail to see that much advantage is to be gained by the turning over of the hand at all. If the stroke is to be a plain one, the ordinary bridge suffices, and if screw or side, or both, are to be applied, the bridge can be made lower or/and put into proper alignment in settling down to the stroke. At any rate, if the bridge hand is turned over to the right, either for screw or side purposes, the stance is affected.