New balls?

[jrc750]

The players have known about the new balls for a few weeks now, and yes they are lighter than usual. I believe the new balls are called "Aramith Tournament Champion Superbro 1G" - can be purchased from www.cuepower.co.uk.

Those balls are exactly the same weight as normal Tournament Champion balls, but with a supposedly more accurate weight spread, sales talk really as most sets will be within same tolerances anyway

[syw]

The salesman at Cuepower did say that the new balls were the same weight, but a member of my family is a pro, and he reckons they are definitely lighter. He has also practised with Ebdon, who is very technical about snooker equipment, and he also says they are lighter. Maybe it is the weight spread that's making the difference??

[DeanH]

1Gs lighter?
My old TCs (3g range) are 139-141g across the set.
My friend's 1Gs (1g range) are all 139g.
Also the 1Gs have been out for some time now and I would not call them "new" on the tournament scene.

[Achamian]

Did anyone hear what Stephen Hendry said about the balls this morning?

I think it was something about a 'new manufacturer', but I didn't completely catch what he said.

[cpenney]

yes i heard hendry say that as well. That's all he said tho

[Achamian]

yes i heard hendry say that as well. That's all he said tho

Thank you. I thought that was what Hendry said.

This is so annoying. Several different commentators have talked about having 'new balls' now, but they NEVER say anything concrete about the situation.

I'm pretty sure that most snooker players (including myself) think that playing with different snooker balls is quite a big deal, and would be very interested to find out more.

So why don't they just tell us EXACTLY what's going on?

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[Redphex]

maybe it's just that saluc, producer of the aramith balls, have been acquired by iwan simonis. but that actually was already in may last year.

the balls on tv just kick all the same. so I couldn't care less about them.

[Achamian]

maybe it's just that saluc, producer of the aramith balls, have been acquired by iwan simonis. but that actually was already in may last year.

Yes, maybe they do mean that. But the 'maybe' is the problem. If they just told us exactly what's going on we wouldn't have any 'maybes' to concern ourselves about.

If it's exactly the same set of balls, just supplied by Simonis instead of Saluc, then it's not a big deal. But, if they have changed the composition of the balls in any way, then it definitely is a big deal.

Hello World snooker, just tell us exactly what's going on for ****'s sake!

the balls on tv just kick all the same. so I couldn't care less about them.

That is so true! It's so bad now that they are even showing us statistics for kicks. The last kicks statistic I saw, Judd Trump had ten kicks in twelve frames in his match with Ronnie. I must say that this is absolutely ridiculous. It's basically turning the game into a bit of a lottery. Whoever gets the least number of kicks wins!

I find it absolutely incredible that nothing has been done about it the 'kicks' problem yet. I'm pretty sure that, in golf, if the golf balls started veering all over the place or something, teams of scientists would be falling over themselves to try to correct the problem. But professional snooker players just have to 'put up' with the 'kicks' problem. I think this is absolutely bizarre.

It seems that we can build a Superconducting Supercollider to help us discover the secrets of the universe, but we can't stop balls from 'kicking' on a snooker table.

I think we just haven't tried hard enough!

[Byrom]

You never seem to get kicks on club tables with thicker cloth. So I think it - getting kicks - is not as much to do with the balls as it is the cloth.

As for them G 1 balls they have been used for ages as DeanH says and both these G 1's in the fancy box and the ordinary Tournament champions in my opinion are great and I wish every club used them only - far better than using these light whites we use at the down and dowdy working men's clubs and other run down snooker clubs across the country. I play much better using them and there is a big difference.

[Redphex]

just now on Eurosport:

chatter about "new, lighter balls ... nothing has changed in the last 2 years."