This is really misleading. In the pro game, they went to one foul in about 1983 or 1984. Yes, jump shots existed, but you rarely saw one, even at pro level. Jumps were a trivial part of the game. Jump cues were rarely seen, even in pro events, until the mid-1990s, even though the modern jump cue was invented in about 1987 by Pat Fleming.
That's because jump cues didn't become so necessary until the rules went to one foul.
The modern jump cue was actually invented by Oliver Stops in Germany in about 1991ish. That was the first jump cue to use phenolic tips and normal shafts with a conical taper and have about an 8oz weight.
Since then there have been many variations. In America Eddie Pruitt was the first to offer a jump cue with a phenolic tip, Eddie's 747. But it was just a thick Dowell with a 15mm tip. One could make the ball hop but with little to no control.
The Oliver Stops cue was the first to offer a full range of jumpability with cue ball control. Since then jump cues have only improved until there is almost no such thing as a bad jump cue in terms of performance.
Prior to jump cue lengths being set at a minimum of 41" we were jumping with shafts and no one cared. I gambled A LOT playing two foul roll-out and never once did anyone complain when I would use a shafts to jump.
You know when the complaints started? When jump cues got really well engineered. When they became real instruments of precision shot making the complaints started in America. No such complaints in Europe where I lived throughout the 90s.
I will say this about American pool and jump cues. Because we went through the Jump Rod period, thick rods only good for making the cue ball jump with very little precision, I feel that these devices soured many on jump cues in general.
We never had jump rods in Europe. We had jump cues, starting with the Meucci, joss, Huebler models which increased the range of possible jump shots but which were not really well engineered. Then Oliver Stops really reinvented the jump cue into a really precise instrument that allowed the player access to an amazing range of jump shots, from a credit card width to table length into a small area.
The rise of modern jump cues and adoption tracks 100% in lockstep with the rise of one-foul ball-in- rules.
As they say necessity is the mother of invention and in this case the precision jump cue allowed players to add a wide range of new shots to their skill set provided that they take the time to develop those skills.
Or, to put it another way, a jump cue allows me to make shots that Strickland was doing with a "full-ish" cue but Strickland with a modern jump cue can do so much more and more consistently than I ever can.
Even so I still have to practice to be able to pull off the shots at all even with a jump cue.
I understand your point from a spectator perspective. I hope you understand mine from a get-in-the-grease perspective. The ease of playing safe in one foul nine ball is not commensurate with the penalty for not making a good hit. So the player facing a blocked object ball needs every legal weapon and skill to use it that they can acquire.
Sometimes the jump is the best shot to take. Sometimes the kick and sometimes the masse'. Now with the modern equipment the human shooter has the full range of shots available that are humanly possible and they face no limits other than their own personal skill level.
