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Many of us have a few more empty hours on our hands than usual, right? What to do? Practice! Not everybody has access to a billiard table, and that’s a shame. If you depend on your club, and the...
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Many of us have a few more empty hours on our hands than usual, right? What to do? Practice!
Not everybody has access to a billiard table, and that’s a shame. If you depend on your club, and the club is closed due to Covid, there’s not a lot you can do. But if you have a table at home, or your club allows you to practice by yourself or – maintaining distance – with a friend, here’s my 3-cushion practice tip of the week.
You should play the occasional 1-CUSHION match.
It’s not to replace regular 3-cushion practice, of course not. And it won’t be an effort to get better at 1-cushion than de Bruijn and Caudron, because you’ll have a better chance at winning the lottery. But playing 1-cushion from time to time adds to your skill set. Think of it as additional tools in your tool box. You will learn about cue ball behavior in a new way. You will get much better at judging lines that have no english. You’ll improve your speed control. You will develop an instinct for favorable and unfavorable areas of the table. You’ll get a more obedient “second” ball (some call it the first object ball). Your stroke will become more versatile. Your overall game will climb the ladder in terms of finesse and precision.
Is that enough reason to try it out? I certainly hope so.
Forty years ago, the best 1-cushion players in the world were Ceulemans and Dielis. You know what they achieved in 3-cushion, I don’t have to tell you. Move on a generation: Zanetti, Blomdahl, Leppens, Jaspers are or were all pretty close to world class in 1-cushion. Yeah, a notch below JPdB and FC. But those two are (with tournament averages over 20) living on a different planet. Horn is a superb 1-cushion player, and so is Dinh Nai Ngo. These great 3C players are not good at 1C by coincidence. There's a link between 1C and 3C, and it's much stronger than the one between balkline and 3C.
What should you expect from an hour of 1-cushion practice? At first: disappointment, frustration, self-hatred and a strong desire to sell your cue and get drunk. It’s a difficult game. But once you get past that stage, find your feet and get back to a 3-cushion state of mind (“I am happy with every individual point I make”), the frustration will fade. You’ll run the occasional five or six, and then there will be the moment when a “gather” rolls well for you, the table shrinks to napkin size and you can make seven or eight easy, miniature points. And that will feel SO good.
Try to get your friend or practice partner into the idea. Make it short: an hour is fine. I am almost certain that if you try it once, you’ll do it again. And please, let us know if you liked it.
