In Baulk
By KENNETH GREGORY
TOE DAVIS surveyed the interior of Burroughes J Hall and said 'Gee whiz!' It was 4.19 on a February afternoon in 1960; and Davis had Just cut an impossible red into the centre right- hand pocket and brought the cue ball back, off two cushions, to sit snugly behind the black. As he expressed himself involuntarily in appreciation of his own genius, I understood something that had baffled me throughout the day: why billiards and snooker no longer command, space in our news- papers. That very morning our imperial four- Penny had devoted fourteen inches to a rugby match between two London hospitals, six inches to a Play wherein Miss Anna Neagle woos her ex-husband, and two and a half inches to the C minor symphony of Brahms as expounded by Klemperer. The exhibition match between Davis and Willie Smith had been dismissed in three lines. I concluded that, like Davis's exclamatory con- versation, billiards and snooker have presumably dated in appeal. Burroughes Hall is of course only the Oval of billiards; the august Lord's—Thurston's in Leicester Square—was converted to more utili- tarian uses some five years ago by the Automobile Association. At Thurston's, peers of the realm would rub shoulders with comedians and nod to the occasional cleric as they lit after-dinner cigars. Round the top of the walls there was a painting Purporting to represent some sylvan scene, half- Way between something out of Dante and the backcloth of a provincial pantomime. At Bur- roughes Hall there is no sylvan scene and the spectators are less aristocratic. Aged men not only wear cloth caps, they keep them on indoors; a jerkin-clad youth with glossy hair can sit finger- ing the ends of his companion's college scarf— she hovers motionless with hands clasped in front of her chin as if recalling Dame Edith Evans at t'i e beginning of Daphne Laureola. But here there is no brandy glass to clutch, only the memory of Incomparable skill on the green cloth. Billiards has never, so far as I know, inspired a Cardus to take up his pen on its behalf—though Whatever refers with pride to an essay by Priestley. whatever the reason, billiards was ousted in the ,PoPular imagination by snooker, and snooker— had We but known it—received a mortal blow on thadaybefore Thurston's closed. For it was then ,, t Davis achieved his heart's desire: he made °le maximum break of 147 and did what a Brad- 'Nu or Hogan must ever be denied—he destroyed the basis of all ambition. Willie Smith, who sat watching that break, declares that it contained only one stroke of genius, but then Smith is an artist who would doubtless fault the Archangel Gabriel for taking the long rest when he might settle for a leg-in-the-air, left-handed stroke. The formal introductions were brief and hesi- tant. The referee, his white gloves suggesting that he had been commandeered to serve at some Victorian young ladies' party, presented first Willie Smith and then Davis. Smith, small and sparse on top, peered solemnly at the spectators, jerked a bow and adjusted a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; Davis, potentially a rubber face but frozen by success, into an elder statesman—Leslie Henson might have boasted such a face had he devoted his life to Galsworthy—twitched an eye- brow and reclined against a wall. The referee's voice trailed away, a man in the second row took snuff, and Smith missed a none- too-difficult cannon. Lest newcomers to Bur- roughes Hall should attribute human error to old age—and Smith has been a professional these fifty years—the culprit generously attributed his error to a surfeit of Yorkshire pudding. Those at the back laughed, those nearer the table parted their lips in sympathy. Davis wrinkled his nose. Not that Willie Smith is lesser; he merely repre- sents an older generation of cue men. The great ones against whom he battled, and whom Tom Webster immortalised—Melbourne Inman, Tom Reece and Tom Newman—are now dead. Smith no longer practises for eight hours a day as he did half a century ago; he rarely practises at all and plays, as it were, from memory. A Groucho grown a trifle slow in movement, though not in repartee, he plays with his chin some four inches above the cue and not, as Davis does, a bare half- inch. Davis, you sense, sights the ball at which he is aiming; Smith surveys the scene benevolently as if to take in the whole situation even at the moment of impact. Smith would move Mr. Cardus to rhapsodise over the 'quiddity of the man,' with due reference to Strauss's Till thrown in. Davis, almost devoid of mannerisms and guilty only of a slight rolling of the eyes when the other man flukes, would qualify for comparison with Tos- canini's Mozart—Davis expressed himself in a losing hazard as perfect as we shall witness in this world. Only I did not detect in the shot any dis- arming courtesy.' The great billiards player proclaims himself most of all in his method of break-building. Davis is the all-rounder whose repertoire of strokes is so comprehensive that after a while one grows rest- less, believing that one could take over almost anywhere in a Davis break and play the next shot as well as he. But only a rashly confident amateur could feel this way about Smith, whose game can be broken down into its component parts with each part visibly a joy. The reason for this is that Davis prefers to concentrate his game, playing the long shot only when necessary to gain position or get him out of trouble, while Smith diffuses his.
The Tom Webster cartoons are repro- duced by courtesy of the Daily Mail. Davis's highest break of the afternoon, one of 291, was relentlessly efficient. The first 90 were scored by a cannon-pot red-cannon sequence at the top of the table as effortlessly as though Davis was availing himself of grooves underneath the cloth. Then, at 98, he manoeuvred the balls on to the side cushion and, with his right hand clutch- ing the cue half-way along its length, executed a score or more of close cannons while the balls moved no more than a foot from their original position. At 140 his touch faltered for a moment and compelled him to a long forcing in-off; ten points later he was back again at the top of the table.
I felt no excitement as Davis played, only awe of a wonderful technique. He is not a romantic figure, for his very remoteness precludes that; when he miscues, one feels no mischievous relief, rather a sinking sensation that extraneous forces are conspiring against him. But Smith warms our hearts; why, were we endowed with his touch, his knowledge of angles, his appreciation of the art of billiards, and his experience—we could play like Smith. True there was a swerving in-off red which might have been beyond us (on seeing it Davis divined the truth and sat down), yet the first fifty-nine points of the break were surely ours for the making. Then something went wrong and his opponent's white finished up some six inches below the left centre pocket and almost on the cushion. Smith sighed, and we sighed with him— our undeserved sympathy was the challenge he wanted. Fifty-seven came from the red alone and we drifted along in a happy dream forgetful of the unplayable white. Suddenly Smith clucked and glanced artfully at Davis, his cue ball was at last in the one place from which he could safely move the white. Move it he did and grinned. `That took me a long time.' We all applauded and nodded to one another, all save the man in the second row who again took snuff, this time with a flourish. The world was demonstrably a better place, and virtue was triumphant. A few minutes before five o'clock Davis and Smith walked out into Soho Square, twin exponents of an esoteric art, into an age of girls in black stockings. The following Monday I searched in vain through The Times for the result of their endeavours; perhaps the aged men in cloth caps might have remedied this had they started throwing bottles on to the table. Or is it simply that billiards is no longer considered fashionable? Two centuries ago Davis might have been invited to the court of Frederick the Great. Today . . . Well, Burroughs and Watts are 'By Appointment To Her Majesty The Queen Billiard Table Makers.' I wonder who plays in that house- hold?
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