Sweetest Strokes

M

mbvl

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
There is a thread on the main forum entitled "Top 10 sweetest strokes of all time". So far no one has mentioned any carom players. Let's hear from the carom crowd.

Here's my top six (in no particular order):

Raymond Ceulemans
Frederic Caudron
Sang Chun Lee
Daniel Sanchez
Semih Sayginer
George Ashby

For me, there is also a category, "Ugly but Deadly Accurate":

Allen Gilbert
Torbjorn Blomdahl
Dick Jaspers

JMHO, (but I expect to get some guff for the latter category)

Mark
 
mbvl said:
There is a thread on the main forum entitled "Top 10 sweetest strokes of all time". So far no one has mentioned any carom players. Let's hear from the carom crowd.

Here's my top six (in no particular order):

Raymond Ceulemans
Frederic Caudron
Sang Chun Lee
Daniel Sanchez
Semih Sayginer
George Ashby

For me, there is also a category, "Ugly but Deadly Accurate":

Allen Gilbert
Torbjorn Blomdahl
Dick Jaspers

JMHO, (but I expect to get some guff for the latter category)

Mark
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the best I've seen. Caudron - Forthomme - Sayginer - Tasdemir.
The worst most efficient one is definitely Zanetti in my book. What a terrible and ugly "accurate" technic.
 
Thierry Layani said:
the best I've seen. Caudron - Forthomme - Sayginer - Tasdemir.
The worst most efficient one is definitely Zanetti in my book. What a terrible and ugly "accurate" technic.
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Thierry,

After I had posted my lists I thought about editing it to add Tasdemir and Zanetti to the (obvious) lists. Marco should have been at the very top. I enjoy watching all of these great players, but some have styles that I would never encourage a student to emulate.

Mark
 
For me it's gotta be Sang Lee. Waaay too much wrist to be considered textbook, but you have to love it. I still never get tired of hearing how he'd bet people he could make contact on the third ball without knocking the coin off the top. Has anyone here ever seen this to verify it?

Also, perhaps unrelated: If you had a category for 'Carom strokes least likely to carry over well into the Pool World', think he would top that list? Has anyone ever seen him play pool? I know the greats are almost always capable of respectable play in most any game, but his stroke just seems so *unlikely* for it that I wonder...
 
mbvl said:
There is a thread on the main forum entitled "Top 10 sweetest strokes of all time". So far no one has mentioned any carom players. Let's hear from the carom crowd.

Here's my top six (in no particular order):

Raymond Ceulemans
Frederic Caudron
Sang Chun Lee
Daniel Sanchez
Semih Sayginer
George Ashby

For me, there is also a category, "Ugly but Deadly Accurate":

Allen Gilbert
Torbjorn Blomdahl
Dick Jaspers

JMHO, (but I expect to get some guff for the latter category)

Mark
Click to expand...

Best
Frederic Caudron
Raymond Ceulemans
Daniel Sanchez
Willie Hoppe (don't laugh)

Worst
Zanetti

Kind of reminds me: Do you move your back wrist when stroking or do you keep it locked? How are the traditional mechanics of the back hand and the front?
 
mbvl said:
There is a thread on the main forum entitled "Top 10 sweetest strokes of all time". So far no one has mentioned any carom players. Let's hear from the carom crowd.

Here's my top six (in no particular order):

Raymond Ceulemans
Frederic Caudron
Sang Chun Lee
Daniel Sanchez
Semih Sayginer
George Ashby

For me, there is also a category, "Ugly but Deadly Accurate":

Allen Gilbert
Torbjorn Blomdahl
Dick Jaspers

JMHO, (but I expect to get some guff for the latter category)

Mark
Click to expand...

i don't watch a whole lot of billiards. how about some video clips?
 
HomeBrewer said:
For me it's gotta be Sang Lee. Waaay too much wrist to be considered textbook, but you have to love it. I still never get tired of hearing how he'd bet people he could make contact on the third ball without knocking the coin off the top. Has anyone here ever seen this to verify it?

Also, perhaps unrelated: If you had a category for 'Carom strokes least likely to carry over well into the Pool World', think he would top that list? Has anyone ever seen him play pool? I know the greats are almost always capable of respectable play in most any game, but his stroke just seems so *unlikely* for it that I wonder...
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I don't entirely get it either, pool or billiards? Accurate vs. 'sweet'. If you never miss, but people don't like your stroke, are you 'sweet' or 'ugly'. What makes it 'sweet', a little loose wrist action? Me, I'll take dead accuracy over sweetness
 
the most silky:Saygıner
the most explosive:Blomdahl
The straightest and most authoritative:Jaspers
the best touch :Sang lee

I am not sure about the application 'sweet' to a stroke but if it is the most eye pleasing,then I choose the Saygıner's stroke,but the stroke which causes an awe for me is the Jaspers's stroke.His pendulum movement is as great as a french cathedral.

regards,
 
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Yeah, I like Jaspers, kind of mechanical, but he can shave the wings off a fly at ten feet. There's a great shot, I think on a caromTV video where ball two is frozen to the middle of the top short rail, and ball three is a hair off the bottom short rail, almost middle, and the cueball is down towards the corner left of ball two, and he hits it dead on, ten feet away, and makes three rails. Bob Byrne commentating can barely believe it.
I think I like the dead accurate guys more than the flashy. Sang Lee is fun to watch, but would you teach that stroke to somebody just starting the game?
 
Sanchez lost his stroke with his hair.
Well, we won't be seeing any of them this year anyway:(
 
eze123 said:
Sanchez lost his stroke with his hair.
Well, we won't be seeing any of them this year anyway:(
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Have you seen any sstats for his tourney avgs over the past years (10+)?

I would love to see the trend. He came out of the gate ~1995 so fast!
 
Black-Balled said:
I like Sanchez's stroke...at least the one he had in the 90's!
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Sanchez has a very strong stroke.He is a small gentleman but can strike a ball very hard if he wishes.

some observations:

Saygıner has a small sidearm in long shots and he is phenomenal when his cue ball is very near to the first object ball.

Zanetti has a very powerful stroke.He can kick like a monster but he is not very precise in long strokes a la Jaspers but I may be wrong

Blomdahl is surprisingly very strong when his cue ball is frozen to the short rail.His explosive cueing helps.

Blomdahl hits with the most conviction.I saw he played with a cue half of its leather tip gone but it did not stop him.

Caudron has a fantastic stroke but he plays very fast and that hurts him in my humble opinion.

Jaspers does on average 12 pendulum swings(I cannot remember the exact english word for this action) and more than 20 on difficult shots.
He is that's why so strong and others have difficulty to beat him for the last two years

by the way,

I like Corey Duel's stroke from Pool and Shawn Murpy's stroke from Snooker.

regards,
 
Black-Balled said:
Have you seen any sstats for his tourney avgs over the past years (10+)?

I would love to see the trend. He came out of the gate ~1995 so fast!
Click to expand...

No, he's still an incredible player, I was just being a dick, but he doesn't seem to have fulfilled the promise that it seemed he had, he was playing people twice his age incredibly well, so it seemed like given ten more years he would be way ahead of his seniors. I remember someone saying somewhere that Ceulemans was the first wave, Blomdahl the second, and Sanchez was going to take the game to the next level. Doesn't seem like it's going to happen, but still fun to see when he was a kid with hair playing incredible billiards, hell, Byrne has that draw shot in one of his books that he played in one of the early SLIOs, and he was what, 18?
 
I am in complete agreement. Not that Sanchez is not a great player, just doesn't yet seem to have reached his expected potential.

I was just watching vids of his first tourney here. Good stuff...IIRC, he was 17 and Sang Lee paid his way over.

eze123 said:
No, he's still an incredible player, I was just being a dick, but he doesn't seem to have fulfilled the promise that it seemed he had, he was playing people twice his age incredibly well, so it seemed like given ten more years he would be way ahead of his seniors. I remember someone saying somewhere that Ceulemans was the first wave, Blomdahl the second, and Sanchez was going to take the game to the next level. Doesn't seem like it's going to happen, but still fun to see when he was a kid with hair playing incredible billiards, hell, Byrne has that draw shot in one of his books that he played in one of the early SLIOs, and he was what, 18?
Click to expand...
 
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