It is no use trying to play billiards-”on a cloth untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls”, as W. S. Gilbert has it. Billiards is essentially a game of precision, and to play it at all well you must have the right implements to play with. A cue of your own is not a luxury, it is as much a necessity as his own clubs are to a golfer.

Of late years, Willie Smith has set the fashion for a heavy cue tipped with a brass ferrule. His cue weighs 18 oz. John Roberts said: “As regards the weight of a cue, I think 15 oz. to 16 oz. is heavy enough for anyone.

The length of a cue should be from 4 feet 8| inches to 4 feet 9 inches. Tom Newman uses a 17-oz. cue measuring 4 feet 10 inches in length, and as Smith’s is heavier still, it is evident that the best of modern billiardists favour distinctly heavier cues than were used by the old past master of the game.

Weight and Length of Cue

I advise my readers to be up to date as regards using a cue of useful weight. The reason is mainly this-as I shall tell you again later on, one of the principal things in billiard playing is to “let the weight of the cue do the work”. Therefore, provided it does not feel clumsy and awkward in your hand, you should select a cue which is heavy rather than light. Then the “weight of the cue” will do all the “work” you want it to perform; there is a lot more in this than you may think.

To read more, go to the Billiard Tip website by clicking on this link.