Why do some Chinese players shoot insanely fast?

kingwang · 2026-03-10T15:48:04+00:00

One thing I've noticed about mainland Chinese players, both pros and amateurs, is that some of them shoot bizarrely hard and fast. Shooting hard makes sense because of how the Chinese tables work, but I can't figure out for the life of me why they're playing at such a fast tempo and how they're making it work on 3.5" pockets. Here's an example of two players playing Golden Nine like they're imitating Tony Drago about to miss his flight: Some highlights 13:15 - great example of what I'm talking about. It's a routine shot but it's still the 9 ball and missable and Meng shoots it like it's a hanger 23:45 - Tong with a tough runout, averaging about 10 seconds per shot. The entire rack would have been that fast if he didn't need to grab an extension 32:05 - Another tough runout with a tricky shot on the 3 and it's still < 10s per shot 36:51 - It's a close match and both players attempt insanely steep cuts on the 9 ball without taking any time to evaluate. No checking of angles or anything, just YOLO 40:22 - WTF was this sequence? Neither player takes their time and Tong takes the lead by absolutely smoking in a tough 9 ball with zero pre-strokes or any semblance of a pre-shot routine Now, to be fair, these guys (especially Tong Lu) are extreme examples, but they're pretty good representations of what I'm talking about. Compare this to Joshua Filler, who we consider a fast shooter, shooting a very routine 9 ball (43:55 if the link doesn't work). For a more direct comparison, here's what some non-Chinese players look like when playing the exact same game Ko Pin Yi - Skip to 2:27:56 and 4:06:40 to see him shooting some routine 9 balls. Same KPY we always see - takes his time, checks his angles, not slow but not fast Pagulayan shooting a routine 9 ball - Skip to 1:19:32 if the link doesn't work Wu Jiaqing (moved to China as an adult, so I'm counting him here) shooting a routine 9 ball - Skip to 1:45:15 if the link doesn't work. Normal pre-shot routine: chalks, checks the angle, squares up, shoots