Review of Saeed's Cue Action

[thelongbomber]

I gentlemen recently visited my web site and got in touch with me on Skype. Over several discussions, he finally delivered a video to me which I reviewed and posted on Youtube. Any and all comments are welcome. If you wish to post comments on this video, post them here, or visit the video page and post your comments on my web site at

http://snookerdelight.com/snooker-ar...on-and-review/

P.S. If you get This video is unavailable, please check back in about 1 hour. It will take me some time to upload to Youtube. Thanks.

Thank you for watching!

[nrage]

His grip hand is moving toward his body, he is striking with right hand side (his perspective), the white skews left (his perspective), and strikes the left of the object ball. That is why he is missing, IMO. On the shots he pots, the hand moves /after/ contact with the white.

[cyberheater]

I'm no expert but he doesn't look vertical. His cueing looks on the slant. His back is also not down far enough. It should be flatter (I think).

[nrage]

It's hard to say for certain, it would be better if there was a video looking straight down the line of aim from the pocket, from directly to the side and from directly behind.

[vmax4steve]

What you mention about what Steve Davis says regarding stance depending on being right or left eye dominant is correct IMO, right eye dominant right handed players should be squarer on to the table like Hendry was, left eye dominant right handed players should be more side on (boxer stance) and vice versa for lefties.
How to get down lower to the bed of the table when you are tall and taking a square stance is not easy though and placement of the right foot at a 45 degree angle to the line of aim should make the stance more comfortable

Saeed needs to implement this and also needs to hold his cue at the end of the butt and not three inches from the end as he is doing now in order not to bring the shoulder into the shot before the strike.
Although we can't see from the frontal position I think that his cue arm is forward of, or bang on vertical at the address position, slightly behind is better ala Barry Hawkins and John Higgins.

But first and foremost he needs to focus on the contact point of the object ball when standing behind the shot prior to getting down into his stance, and again at the moment of the strike.

[hotpot]

I think his stance is inconsistent , hard to tell but id dones,nt look as if the cue is brushing his chest to keep it on line , he is standinding too far left and i would think there is some sideways movementof the cue .

[thelongbomber]

His grip hand is moving toward his body, he is striking with right hand side (his perspective), the white skews left (his perspective), and strikes the left of the object ball. That is why he is missing, IMO. On the shots he pots, the hand moves /after/ contact with the white.

Interesting how you see the right hand side. I will have to look at the video again. I suspect the tip may be moving off center after he gets down.

Thanks nrage

[thelongbomber]

It's hard to say for certain, it would be better if there was a video looking straight down the line of aim from the pocket, from directly to the side and from directly behind.

Ya, I'm trying to get him to send me more videos.

[thelongbomber]

What you mention about what Steve Davis says regarding stance depending on being right or left eye dominant is correct IMO, right eye dominant right handed players should be squarer on to the table like Hendry was, left eye dominant right handed players should be more side on (boxer stance) and vice versa for lefties.

Yep, I found from my own experience it was correct.

How to get down lower to the bed of the table when you are tall and taking a square stance is not easy though and placement of the right foot at a 45 degree angle to the line of aim should make the stance more comfortable

OK, that's great info to know. Does the foot angle change the person's hip rotation somehow? I have asked Saeed to review this page as well to read what others are saying.

Saeed needs to implement this and also needs to hold his cue at the end of the butt and not three inches from the end as he is doing now in order not to bring the shoulder into the shot before the strike.
Although we can't see from the frontal position I think that his cue arm is forward of, or bang on vertical at the address position, slightly behind is better ala Barry Hawkins and John Higgins.

Interesting. Is there a particular reason this is the case? Higgins slides his body into the shot after he gets down on the table, presumably to create this angle. Has there been any effective research to determine if this is helpful?

But first and foremost he needs to focus on the contact point of the object ball when standing behind the shot prior to getting down into his stance, and again at the moment of the strike.

Yes, he does need to do that. Thanks vmax for the comments.

[thelongbomber]

I think his stance is inconsistent , hard to tell but id dones,nt look as if the cue is brushing his chest to keep it on line , he is standinding too far left and i would think there is some sideways movementof the cue .

Yes, I'm hoping he will provide more videos so I can see. Thanks hotpot.

[Sidd]

What you mention about what Steve Davis says regarding stance depending on being right or left eye dominant is correct IMO, right eye dominant right handed players should be squarer on to the table like Hendry was, left eye dominant right handed players should be more side on (boxer stance) and vice versa for lefties.
How to get down lower to the bed of the table when you are tall and taking a square stance is not easy though and placement of the right foot at a 45 degree angle to the line of aim should make the stance more comfortable

Saeed needs to implement this and also needs to hold his cue at the end of the butt and not three inches from the end as he is doing now in order not to bring the shoulder into the shot before the strike.
Although we can't see from the frontal position I think that his cue arm is forward of, or bang on vertical at the address position, slightly behind is better ala Barry Hawkins and John Higgins.

But first and foremost he needs to focus on the contact point of the object ball when standing behind the shot prior to getting down into his stance, and again at the moment of the strike.

And this got me in to all sorts of troubles until a while ago. i am left handed and have a left master eye. Now to favour this I switched on to square on whereas I did not know that due to being tall it will force me not to lie down completely on the table.

After your advice i switched back to boxers and things straightened out for me. However, this post of yours makes me ask you this: while I am back to boxers and that helps me in cueing straight. Do you still think that for me in order to avoid that shoulder muscle in the shot before strike should I hold the butt near its end to ensure my elbow is behind vertical in the address position ???

[vmax4steve]

I first noticed this in Steve Davis when he first burst on to the scene in 1980. As a tall man his cue action was compact to enable him to use a standard length cue. He got his stance so that his right arm, hand, shoulder where all dead straight on the line of aim, with his left arm bent so that he could have a decent enough bridge over his thumb making his cue arm vertical at the address position.

One would have though that with having the right arm, hand, shoulder dead straight on the line it wouldn't matter if he dropped the shoulder into the shot previous to the strike, like Ronnie does, but in the WSC in 1982 that was indeed the case as his action had changed somewhat and his cue arm was now slightly forward of the vertical and he got hammered by Tony Knowles 10-1.
No disrespect to Knowles as he played so well he could have beaten Davis anyway, but by his own standards Davis did play poorly.

In 1983 however Davis was back, but this time his cue arm was slightly behind the vertical and for him to know it was he had a pencil mark on the shaft of his cue just at the place where it rested on his thumb at the address position.
He won the title again but to be honest he never again reached the absolute peaks of performance in his game that he did between 1980 and 1982. Of course he still won many titles but now he started to tinker with his action and also he had shown himself to be human like everyone else and that aura that surrounded him was gone.

As a tall man with long arms I always found it very hard to find a stance that gave me enough cue over my thumb in order to sight the shot well without having my cue arm forward of the vertical despite having my hand right on the very end of the butt of my cue, sometimes I would only hold the cue with my first finger and thumb with all other fingers behind the end of the butt and off the cue.
This was because I needed to have my left arm straight, couldn't play well at all with it bent.

My solution was a longer cue to suit my height and the length of my arms so I ordered one from a maker who advertised in Cue World magazine and about a month later a perfect ash, ebony 62 inch cue arrived at a price then of about £75. I haven't looked back to be honest and due to my own experience I would recomend a longer cue for all players of six feet and over, including Steve Davis. Not as radically long as mine maybe, but enough to put that cue arm slightly behind the vertical without having to mess about with what could very well be a perfectly good stance.
In Saeed's case I see that he doesn't hold the cue right at the end of the butt and looking at his stance and the straightness of his left arm I would say that he cues slightly forward of the vertical at the address position, thus bringing the shoulder in too early, just like Steve Davis did in 1982.
And as Saeed doesn't have perfectly straight aligment, as soon as the shoulder comes into the shot the cue goes off line, and even if he did have perfectly straight alignment, having the cue arm forward of vertical at the address position would also make him prone to closing the grip too early and decelerating the cue before the strike, which I believe was Steve Davis' problem in 1982.

Dropping the shoulder into the shot too early sounds the death knell for most players, check out any early footage of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry and you will see that neither of them did so at their very peak despite having cue actions that had their cue arm at the vertical in the address position. Their timing had to be, and was, perfect then but just how perfect are we mere mortals in comparison to the snooker gods.

For those shorter players who doubt me, if you're five foot six imagine playing with a cue that's only 49 inches long because in effect, at six feet two that was what I was trying to do with a standard 57 inch cue.

[alabadi]

my coach yesterday moved my bridge closer to the cueball with the grip hand still in the same position, this gave me more room on follow though.

I found that I was not getting the correct spin on the cueball, as I dropped my elbow on follow through the tip naturally raises, so it was hitting higher than planned. by getting closer with the bridge the tip was hitting the selected spot and staying straighter and on follow through to get the correct reaction.

Alabbadi

[nrage]

my coach yesterday moved my bridge closer to the cueball with the grip hand still in the same position, this gave me more room on follow though.

I found that I was not getting the correct spin on the cueball, as I dropped my elbow on follow through the tip naturally raises, so it was hitting higher than planned. by getting closer with the bridge the tip was hitting the selected spot and staying straighter and on follow through to get the correct reaction.

I achieved a similar effect moving the grip hand back 1/2-1inch recently. The end result of both is the grip arm slightly backward of vertical, which means contact with the write earlier, which means any faults which appear later in the action - like dropping the elbow don't happen until later, etc..

[CoachGavin]

Vmax, have to disagree about a couple of things. Most commentators and books I have read suggest Davis was exhausted from tournaments and exhibitions and that was part of the reason he lost so heavily to Knowles. Also I disagree he lost his aura and never reached the same heights of performance. He won virtually everything in the 1987/88 season for instance including smashing Hallett 9:0 in the masters final. Became first player to hit 3 consecutive tons and went on to smash parrot 18:3 in 1989 worlds. It was only when Hendry arrived did players begin to think he was beatable.

Also if you have your grip behind vertical you have to be careful about your timing because you have less room to pull the cue back before your elbow drops considerably on the backswing. The grip also has to close in time for the strike so this needs to be checked. A lot of players who actually drop their elbow on the shot have the grip slightly inside vertical so that the backswing is more controlled. Just a few thoughts.