Ronnie O'Sullivan's Views On Cues

cardiac kid said:
Years ago while my late friend, the great Pat Howey, was living in Rochester, I arrived at the pool room sans cue. Picked a house cue out of the rack. During one of the following games of 14.1, ran over 100. With a house cue. What does that say about all the fuss over expensive custom cues. Specially those with so called technically advanced multi-layered shafts with tips whose names can't be pronounced. Is it you, or the equipment? I'm with Ronnie!

Lyn
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I agree.

I remember my friend doing the similar when playing snooker for the club in a league match. We had been at the bar all day, and when it came to his turn to play, he wandered over (obviously drunk), picked up a rackski and ran 70 something.

I wonder whether obsessing over playing cues (as opposed to fancy cues), is predominantly a characteristic of the young. Certainly when I was young, I thought that a 'really good cue' would do great things to my game, and I got one made to measure by the top cue maker of the time. But isn't looking for a good cue just one manifestation of looking for a 'quick fix' to everything? That must be a youth thing - as you get older, you usually realize that chasing after quick fixes is largely futile.

And before any cue makers complain about my ignorance and lack of appreciation of their art, see my previous post: To avoid cue dependency, I recommend that everyone gets a new cue every year :wink:
 
HomeBrewer said:
Did someone say snooker players don't use a lot of 'side'?

That's a myth you can disprove by watching 10 minutes of world-class play. Easy enough.
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No, he said they stay close to the vertical center. With fuller hits, even small offsets from center produce lots of sidespin. Because the cue ball is slowed down significantly, the spin/speed ratio is increased. Watch the big runs and you'll see they avoid playing thinner than 1/2-ball whenever possible to make potting easier and minimize cue ball movement to stay near the black.

Robert
 
if you don't think they put spin on the CB, just go on youtube and look up Alex "The Hurricane" Higgins....that guy did some MONSTER shot making on the snooker table. I even seen him get hooked and proceed to shoot the most beautiful and perfect masse to cut the ball on the rail into the corner....it looked unreal :eek::grin:
 
Snooker has alot smaller ball compared to the US 9 8 ball.The mass difference is very signifigant and so is the amount of offset required to put spin on the ball. We only have the US size ball for home,but all the bars etc have the snooker size.I play with a 10 mm tip,considered big by snooker players and very small for US 9 ball.With the smaller tip diameter and a smaller tip radius, a less offset is required to get spin on a ball. But with the smaller the ball and tip radius, the more precise you need to be with tip placement on the cueball.If you draw it out you will see what I mean. I have seen a few of snooker/bar players here with 6.5-7 mm tips. They look tiny and the tip radius is about 5mm.They look like a litle ball.
What was missing from Ronnies comment or the info on the cue is the tip radius that he uses, or changed the cue to.
Do not be fooled by the brass ferrule on an Ash snooker cue. It is just a piece of extruded hard brass tube,about .35mm wall thickness and glued in place.It dooes not weigh much.
Lets face it, they are not giving the Pro Players $40 Walmart specials to win a tournamnet with.
 
One suspects that Ronnie's opinion is simply rationalizing the situation.
He broke his cue at home about a year ago in a temper tantrum :grin::grin::grin:
And he has broken a few more since.
Says it feels good.

But then Johnny Archer has broken a cue after an unhappy shot.
Put it behind his neck and snapped the thing.
The video is on youtube.
But I am too lazy to dig it up for you.
 
cardiac kid said:
Years ago while my late friend, the great Pat Howey, was living in Rochester, I arrived at the pool room sans cue. Picked a house cue out of the rack. During one of the following games of 14.1, ran over 100. With a house cue. What does that say about all the fuss over expensive custom cues. Specially those with so called technically advanced multi-layered shafts with tips whose names can't be pronounced. Is it you, or the equipment? I'm with Ronnie!
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Back when I was a teenager and I started to learn billiards, I wanted to buy my first cue. I asked my teacher what cue I should get for the money I had, and he said "one that's straight, made of wood and with a well-glued tip".

He was right.
 
Lifetime high run on a full rack of snooker using a $17 2-piece Italian made 60" cue - 142.

Pretty decent stick for the money. :grin:
 
Ronnie has a new cue and matching clothes, courtesy of his sponsor, Premier Inns, for the Masters start on Sunday.
 

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Andrew Manning said:
That's the thing, this isn't a matter of "rather well". It's a matter of shooting straighter than a field of, quite literally, the world's straightest shooters. The difference between making a very difficult and demanding pot 91.2% and 93.4% of the time makes the difference in these events. There are guys who could outshoot anyone on this continent, in terms of accuracy, by a country mile, who can't make the tour over there. Also consider that every tournament they play is a world championship, basically, since all the best snooker players in the world play in all the events.

So Ronnie dominating that type of field isn't a matter of playing rather well. It's a matter of playing the game at a "world champion" level.

I think the fact that he can do it with a cue he hasn't even gotten acquainted with, says a lot about exactly how important the cue is.

-Andrew
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Where did you develop such a passion for overexplaining the painfully obvious?

Do you really think anyone who reads this forum didn't already understand
all your verbage?

The 'English' are famous for "understatement" even more so than
they are for Snooker - you might want to look it up.

Dale<understating Snooker since the 80s>
 
Robert Raiford said:
No, he said they stay close to the vertical center. With fuller hits, even small offsets from center produce lots of sidespin. Because the cue ball is slowed down significantly, the spin/speed ratio is increased. Watch the big runs and you'll see they avoid playing thinner than 1/2-ball whenever possible to make potting easier and minimize cue ball movement to stay near the black.

Robert
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Very good point, and one that had never occurred to me. Snooker players are brought up to think of 3/4 ball as the ideal shape; as you point out, a result of this is that the cb can be hit nearer the center line while still getting the required deviation off the rail.
 
sheffield6 said:
.... 2 things about Ronnie

1. Dont pay too much attention to what he says, his opinions are changable.

2. He is the most talented snooker player, ever.

3. Whatever he says, he genuinely loves the game.
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Remind me to pay close attention when you mark your score :wink:

As far as Ronnie goes, it seems that half the time he doesn't even know what hand to shoot with :grin:

Dave
 
cardiac kid said:
Years ago while my late friend, the great Pat Howey, was living in Rochester, I arrived at the pool room sans cue. Picked a house cue out of the rack. During one of the following games of 14.1, ran over 100. With a house cue. What does that say about all the fuss over expensive custom cues. Specially those with so called technically advanced multi-layered shafts with tips whose names can't be pronounced. Is it you, or the equipment? I'm with Ronnie!

Lyn
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I don't if you would remember Hugh McDavitt, from Binghamton. He was as "cue conscious" as anyone I knew in the PBL. One day Mac took over a table, told whoever had it to just leave the balls and pay the time. He grabbed a cue off the wall and ran 80 balls with it. He was as surprised as anybody in the place!
 
DaveK said:
Remind me to pay close attention when you mark your score :wink:

As far as Ronnie goes, it seems that half the time he doesn't even know what hand to shoot with :grin:

Dave
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Well Dave, It's a New Year special......3 for the price of 2 :grin:
 
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