Have you actually seen the buckets they were playing on in those days? Buddy's fundamentals were not as good as modern players. The bigger pockets allowed him to get away with it. The slow cloth kept people from just running out for days, even with the bigger pockets, making the game of 9 ball more strategic in nature. Buddy missed balls here and there due to fundamentals, but the slow cloth made it much harder for the opponent to take advantage.
Yes, I am dead serious. Earl Strickland always had better fundamentals. And Earl in his prime would have hung with today's monsters just fine based on fundamentals, if he curbed his tendency to shoot at everything and refined his percentage play a bit.. Buddy would not. Mike Sigel was the same way. Both of them would have had to shore up fundamentals to play with the players of today.
Granted.. All things being equal, players of today would have a serious adjustment period to learn the intricacies of playing on slow cloth. But they are bringing better fundamentals, and a much more refined set of safety/kicking skills. Plus, every modern HOF player plays position just as good as Buddy ever did. But prime Buddy would have a serious disadvantage moving to modern equipment, as any minor mistake comes with SERIOUS punishment. And most of those mistakes come from fundamental flaws.
If you are doubting what I say... Check out this match, that is as close as we are going to get to Buddy Hall's prime, as he was still under the age of 40... He chicken-wings the 5-6 combo, follows it up with a poorly hit position to the 7 (because his game is overly focused on "babying" the ball to open up the pockets to compensate for the stroke flaws..), followed up by chicken-winging the 7 ball. And check out the butchered 9 ball at 1:36:55. Spit right out of the pocket due to chicken-winging the shot, but ends up slopping it in the side. This was 2 years after he earned $85,000 in 1982, so these are his prime tournament years. He's leading Rempe 5-1 at this point, which just goes to show how much weaker the competition was than modern players face, plus how much easier the equipment was.
He made all the balls.. But those sort of flaws REALLY hurt you on either fast cloth.. Or tight pockets. Modern players simply cannot afford the stroke flaws you see in the video. So.. My statement stands. A prime Buddy Hall would need to do serious work on his stroke to compete with modern HOFers.
A telling stat from the video.. "Misses per 100 balls for Buddy Hall?"
6.7% That is a MASSIVE amount, as compared to modern players, and especially considering the equipment this tournament was played on.
(Start at 1:08:00)
