Ball speed is a funny misunderstanding by most, let me try and explain. Everytime an object ball or cue ball comes in contact with a cushion, it loses a little bit of speed, so when doing a 9 rail bank with the cue ball sending it around the table twice, it slows down a little more with each cushion the cue ball comes into contact with. Combine that loss of energy with each cushion contact with the distance the cue ball travels between banks and you have a continued slow down, until the cue ball stops rolling. Doing this 9 ball bank test on a 9ft, then again on a 7ft....it would appear that the 7ft is a faster playing table because the cue ball gets around the 9 banks sooner on a 7ft vs a 9ft if you timed both tables with a stop watch. The reason the 7ft appears to be faster is because there's less cue ball travel between banks....but at the end of the roll of the cue ball coming into on tact with the 9th rail, the cue ball speed is the same on both tables....and the cushions on the 9ft are Artemis while the cushions on the 7ft are the Diamond Black, both being a K55 profile. Until you involve the cushions on either table, they both play at the same exact speed. The speed of the cushion's is greatly effected by where the body of the cushion is when compared to the nose of the cushion, meaning it's just as import to aline the back of the cushion by having the orrect sub rail thickness which determines where that cushions is going to start out at, as well as the correct nose height that works with the sub rail, which places the body of the cushion behind that cushion nose height....combined together correctly....they directly control the energy of the cushions and how they're going to play. Overall, both cushions Diamond uses play great, but the main difference is between the nose of the cushions. The Artemis cushions have a more rounded nose, which means more ball contact, which means more friction, which translates to more angle with spin when a ball comes into contact with a cushion. AND, the 7ft appears to play faster....because there's less distance between cushions to slow the balls down.
