Which snooker player has the most "textbook" fundamentails??

It's hard to choose one in snooker as most of the professionals started young with coaching, hence we have a million Steve Davis clones. I would tend to go with Steve Davis, Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and Stephen Hendry. Incidentally they are the four best ever, the only thing that is debatable is the order.

Some of the strangest mechanics I've seen, Ricky Walden (wonderful player when he gets going though). Mark Selby is all over the place until just before his final stroke. Joe Swail looks a lot like Kieth Mccready.
 
What about Jamie Cope with that chicken wing? Ebdon, King...both legs bent...not all of them are textbook.

What I find fascinating about modern snooker technique is how they keep their cue from wobbling up and down even on big powerful strokes. On longer backstroke they drop their elbow and open up grip hand slightly to keep the cue as parallel as possible. Not the simplest motion of the arm, but I'm sure it has advantage in precise cue tip placement provided you do it right of course. In fact, I can't think of any player who allows the cue to go up and down even the slightest. It seems no one shoots pendulum style with their elbow pinned unless the stroke is very short...
Would it be worth the effort to implement such a technique for pool, or is this needed only for snooker?
 
there are some players who do that. look at daryl peach. but being in the middle of a lot of pro pool players who can make balls with a very dynamic technique can be difficult for someone implementing the strict, accuracy favouring style.
 
Olive said:
there are some players who do that. look at daryl peach. but being in the middle of a lot of pro pool players who can make balls with a very dynamic technique can be difficult for someone implementing the strict, accuracy favouring style.
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Not sure what you mean by this. Why would it be difficult?
 
predator said:
What about Jamie Cope with that chicken wing? Ebdon, King...both legs bent...not all of them are textbook.

What I find fascinating about modern snooker technique is how they keep their cue from wobbling up and down even on big powerful strokes. On longer backstroke they drop their elbow and open up grip hand slightly to keep the cue as parallel as possible. Not the simplest motion of the arm, but I'm sure it has advantage in precise cue tip placement provided you do it right of course. In fact, I can't think of any player who allows the cue to go up and down even the slightest. It seems no one shoots pendulum style with their elbow pinned unless the stroke is very short...
Would it be worth the effort to implement such a technique for pool, or is this needed only for snooker?
Click to expand...

Yes I mentioned a few odd tecniques as well.

I think it wouldn't hurt to implement any snooker technique in your game. More accuracy can never be a bad thing, and contrary to popular belief amongst pool players, snooker players have a lot of cue power. More moving parts is only a bad thing if it doesn't add anything positive to the equation.
 
Snooker players' techniques are generally much more similar than pool players' techniques. In pool there's a lot more variation. One example from pool would be Buddy Hall standing much more upright. All snooker players on the Main Tour have their chin on the cue. Stances for the most part are the same, with one leg straight, and there are no Filipino-style strokes with the cue almost being thrown forward on the delivery, with most players having very little movement on the shot. I agree with Cameron that snooker players can have a lot of cue power without a lot of movement; I don't think anyone in the world can get more spin on a ball than Neil Robertson, and he's also one of the most accurate shotmakers.

I think all of snooker technique is transferable to pool. There's already a lot that's shared between snooker and pool players. Snooker just places greater emphasis on solid fundamentals, having your chin on the cue and keeping movement to a minimum. You can see the difference observing these basic principles makes as players get older. Steve Davis is the only player from the 80s who can still be competitive today, and it's largely due to his superior technique (as well as his tactical game, but that's not the point!)

Contrast Davis with Alex Higgins who jumped up on every ball and you've got a perfect example of how ignoring these basics can adversely affect your game. Alex Higgins, for all his talent, could not compete with the next generation of players coming through while Davis stayed at or near the top. Jimmy White is 5 years younger than Davis, and he hasn't been competitive for a while. Jimmy was closer to "textbook" than Higgins, but still neglected the technical things that Davis worked so hard at.

There are too many now who have all of these qualities to pick one out as the best example, but as has been suggested in a previous post, it all started with Steve Davis...
 
I think the best looking fundamentals of any snooker player ever is Stephen Hendry. I may be a bit bias because he, for me, is the best snooker player to ever live, both by record and ability. I still think his individual performances over his career have been unbelievable. He and Ronnie are the only two that make me walk away shaking my head. If you look at Stephen Hendry and dissect his mechanics and fundamentals over a shot, he is 100% perfection personified. His foot placement is ideal, his wrist is in a perfectly straight line with the rest of his arm. He only delivers the cue through the pendulum of his elbow, and he delivers the cue in the straightest line after follow through. In my opinion, he is the ideal model for a player to emulate. Now, that goes by how one LOOKS.
Going by results and delivery, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Shaun Murphy, Neil Robertson and Stephen Lee come to mind. Dennis Taylor, 85 World Champion and expert commentator, once described Stephen Lee as having "a Rolls Royce cue action"
But Ronnie may top them all for execution. He imparts incredible amounts of top spin, side and screw with the absolute least amount of effort.
 
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