You only have 5 minutes
By Bert van Manen, February 2014
"If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. The warm-up time before a 3-cushion match is not something to take lightly. You are about to kiss a beautiful woman, and when you walk up to her, you don’t want to stumble over the furniture. Also, you want to make sure there’s no piece of spinach between your teeth. Is that a bad analogy? No. It’s all about confidence.
You are doing two things in those five minutes, and they are equally important. You are getting to know the table, and you are finding your stroke. If you succeed on both counts, you will hit the ball with authority, you will make good decisions, and you will scare the hell out of your opponent in the early innings. If you fail on both counts, your stroke will be overly cautious, your decision-making will be iffy, and you will be on the back foot from inning one.
How do you find your stroke, in five minutes? The best advice I can come up with, is: always play billiards the day BEFORE a match. Muscle memory, is what they call it in tennis. Your very intelligent arm will make decisions for you, and they will be so much better than the ones your clumsy brain makes. In the five minutes, you should not be too concerned about points made or missed. It’s all about quality of stroke. Start off with easy shots, just to get comfortable. Try a few with maximum english. Play one or two amortized shots, with NO english. And yes, unleash once or twice, try a 9-cushion shot for all I care. It’s like revving up an engine, you want to be ready to fire on all cylinders. And do yourself a big favor: keep your poker face on, during warm-up. Even if you are flabbergasted by the way the table reacts, if you feel a slight panic creeping up, don’t show it. There is one guy in the room who is pretending to not watch, but he is.
How do you best get to know a table in five minutes? I can’t put enough emphasis on this: play the SAME SHOTS, every time. If you just improvise, you will have no reference. A shot may be long, it may be short, but what does that mean? Did you not hit it all too well? Or is the table slightly longer or shorter than what you are used to? You need to know what is SUPPOSED to happen, in order to correctly interpret what actually happens. If you warm up with positions you know like the back of your hand, the result will have significance. If you miss, you will have learned something about the table. Every outcome of every shot will be instrumental in making the right adjustments during the match. So don’t just fool around, from shot to shot as they roll. Create your own trusted 5-minute routine, and stick with it.
These are shots that – I would suggest – should be in your routine, because they are informative.
1) The break, obviously. Pay attention to the red, especially. Can you find the "systematic” break with position, yellow to bottom-left corner and red high up in the left third of the table? That is, assuming you break from the right, of course.
2) A twice-around from bottom-right to the long rail on the top-left corner. Does it end up on the long or the short rail, as the 6th cushion? On most tables, it will be on the long rail, a few points before the top-right hand corner.
3) Start that same line from halfway on the bottom rail. Can you make a twice-around long enough to end on diamond one on the top rail? Can you make ANY twice-around short enough to end on the second diamond of the last long rail? These lines are important because you use them so often.
4) Always play a shot with maximum, reversing english: right side of the 2nd ball with LHE, ball, long, long, short. It will tell you how much the rail will "bite”, or slide. A seemingly normal table may do either, and the possible difference in outcome is not two inches, but a foot and a half. Think "Caudron”, and you’ll make these look easy.
5) Play one or two "drop-in” shots, short – long – short with no english. Just pretend you are Jaspers, and you’ll hit them less tentatively.
6) Always play two harmonicas, or Popeyus shots as we call them. First, the long – long – long (possibly a 4th long) where you are high over the second ball, and worried about too much curve. Second, the one where you are almost level with it, and worried you can’t get your cue ball to bend back in. Think "Merckx”, and you can’t miss.
7) Set up a standard, easy short-angle shot (long-short-long), and try it three different ways: a) maximum english, full into the object ball, arrive slow with spin, b) neutral half ball, running english c) as thin as you can hit and still reach, compensate with english. This will teach you a lot about when you can play for position, and when to just pick up the point and take your chances. "My name is Tayfun Filippos Horn” would be a good mantra here.
All warmed up? Then trust your judgment, and hit the ball without fear, damn the torpedoes. Think "Blomdahl”.