Found the following interview in this old thread and thought it worth reproducing verbatim since the original link is now archived.
I'll have to split the complete interview across more than one post due to its length.
Uk8ball.com interviews Steve Davis at the nineball worlds
Posted on Wednesday, July 17 2002 @ 18:39:27 GMT Daylight Time
He was immortalised by Spitting Image as Steve 'Interesting' Davis in the Eighties – but the six-times world snooker champion is getting himself a new nicknamed as 'Romford Slim' in the nineball world. Oh, and he still doesn’t like eightball much…
Have you been very much in demand this week?
I think everyone is at the moment. Because of the nature of this event, with the pool village and all the players interacting with everything that's going on, there's such a sense of excitement that you don't mind getting involved and being in demand. It seems to me, perhaps because I'm not very involved in it, that the world of nineball pool is very much one big happy family – or becoming that way as everyone seems to be working to the same ideals. The more the merrier seems to be the call.
How did you get started in nineball?
The first time I played nineball was a 'them and us' match with Terry Griffiths and myself playing Mike Siegel and Jim Rempe in Texas. We played them in a large hotel called the Plaza des Americas on an ice-rink. Now they couldn't melt the ice rink down as they had something important on the next day, so they put boards down on the ice rink and we played nineball pool, straight pool and snooker. Terry and myself played in doubles and singles matches against those two, and the outcome was that they beat us in both the pool disciplines, but the end result was that our feet were frozen even though these boards were on the ice rink. The best way to get through it was to sit down in your chair with your feet in the air. Even worse, the spectators had to stand on these boards so their feet got frozen too. That, bizarrely, was my first experience of nineball.
What are the technical demands of moving from snooker to nineball?
I haven't changed my actual technique for the game of nineball pool, although I could understand how your technique for the game of nineball would need to be different if you were playing it from scratch as nineball is more of a stroking game. Snooker is more of a power and punching game so if you were designing a nineball stroke from scratch you could easily look more like a nineball player with a different stance and a more 'feeling' action. The snooker stance is essentially designed for accuracy over distance and I've stuck with my snooker stance, although I know full well that to play nineball properly you have to smoothly stroke the ball and you cannot play the stun and screw game that is the snooker action.
We understand you had a special cue made that combines both elements of a snooker cue and a nineball cue. Can you tell us about that?
I went to John Parris and we discussed what I wanted. Now the right tool for the job in nineball is obviously a nineball cue with an American tapered shaft, which goes from thick to thin to thick to house the larger ferrul and to help with the looped bridge. It also helps to generate power and gives it a lot more whip and life. Now you don't really want much whip and life on a snooker table so the snooker taper just goes from thick to thin, but playing with an open bridge meant that I didn't have to change to a pool taper. So I said to John Parris that it would probably be better if I stayed with an English taper as I didn't want to go with too big a ferrul so we went with a compromise ferrul. I think we ended up with something like an 11mm ferrul, which is thin by nineball standards but I think that Oliver Ortman plays with something of a similar size. I've also got a fibre ferrul instead of a white plastic ferrul. I don't think you can play with a brass ferrul at pool, but I also don't thnk you can use a plastic ferrule for snooker. It's strange how the games differ like that, so I have a compromise cue because I don't play nineball all the time.
I'll have to split the complete interview across more than one post due to its length.
Uk8ball.com interviews Steve Davis at the nineball worlds
Posted on Wednesday, July 17 2002 @ 18:39:27 GMT Daylight Time
He was immortalised by Spitting Image as Steve 'Interesting' Davis in the Eighties – but the six-times world snooker champion is getting himself a new nicknamed as 'Romford Slim' in the nineball world. Oh, and he still doesn’t like eightball much…
Have you been very much in demand this week?
I think everyone is at the moment. Because of the nature of this event, with the pool village and all the players interacting with everything that's going on, there's such a sense of excitement that you don't mind getting involved and being in demand. It seems to me, perhaps because I'm not very involved in it, that the world of nineball pool is very much one big happy family – or becoming that way as everyone seems to be working to the same ideals. The more the merrier seems to be the call.
How did you get started in nineball?
The first time I played nineball was a 'them and us' match with Terry Griffiths and myself playing Mike Siegel and Jim Rempe in Texas. We played them in a large hotel called the Plaza des Americas on an ice-rink. Now they couldn't melt the ice rink down as they had something important on the next day, so they put boards down on the ice rink and we played nineball pool, straight pool and snooker. Terry and myself played in doubles and singles matches against those two, and the outcome was that they beat us in both the pool disciplines, but the end result was that our feet were frozen even though these boards were on the ice rink. The best way to get through it was to sit down in your chair with your feet in the air. Even worse, the spectators had to stand on these boards so their feet got frozen too. That, bizarrely, was my first experience of nineball.
What are the technical demands of moving from snooker to nineball?
I haven't changed my actual technique for the game of nineball pool, although I could understand how your technique for the game of nineball would need to be different if you were playing it from scratch as nineball is more of a stroking game. Snooker is more of a power and punching game so if you were designing a nineball stroke from scratch you could easily look more like a nineball player with a different stance and a more 'feeling' action. The snooker stance is essentially designed for accuracy over distance and I've stuck with my snooker stance, although I know full well that to play nineball properly you have to smoothly stroke the ball and you cannot play the stun and screw game that is the snooker action.
We understand you had a special cue made that combines both elements of a snooker cue and a nineball cue. Can you tell us about that?
I went to John Parris and we discussed what I wanted. Now the right tool for the job in nineball is obviously a nineball cue with an American tapered shaft, which goes from thick to thin to thick to house the larger ferrul and to help with the looped bridge. It also helps to generate power and gives it a lot more whip and life. Now you don't really want much whip and life on a snooker table so the snooker taper just goes from thick to thin, but playing with an open bridge meant that I didn't have to change to a pool taper. So I said to John Parris that it would probably be better if I stayed with an English taper as I didn't want to go with too big a ferrul so we went with a compromise ferrul. I think we ended up with something like an 11mm ferrul, which is thin by nineball standards but I think that Oliver Ortman plays with something of a similar size. I've also got a fibre ferrul instead of a white plastic ferrul. I don't think you can play with a brass ferrul at pool, but I also don't thnk you can use a plastic ferrule for snooker. It's strange how the games differ like that, so I have a compromise cue because I don't play nineball all the time.