One
of the essentials that Joe Davis and other top players of
his time, Walter Donaldson, John Pulman and Fred Davis,
all adopted was to have a straight bridge arm, (Figures
1 & 2). In my opinion, this does not suit many players and
now-a-days very few leading players play like this.
One moment they talk about bending the front leg to move
into the shot, and the next, when referring to getting down
at the table to address the cue ball, they advocate a straight
bridge arm. In my opinion this is a huge contradiction.
First they are saying move into the shot, then they recommend
holding off by having a straight arm.
Instead,
why not bend the elbow as you are bending the front knee,
in order to get better stability with your forearm? (Figure
3 & 4)
Most
of today's top players are adapting to bending the left
elbow in order to have a steadier bridge. Strangely, when
Joe Davis was playing a shot near the cushion and was not
adopting his usual stance, he did himself actually bend
his left arm.
The
player who bent his arm more than anyone else is ex-world
champion Cliff Thorburn. I wonder how many other players
around the world have a similar action?.
Regarding
the back, or cue arm, Joe claimed that his forearm was completely
vertical from the elbow to the wrist when the tip of the
cue was in the address position at the cue ball. But I know
that he was inside the vertical.
Copies
of three pictures taken from Joe Davis's book Complete Snooker
confirms the point.
As
Figure 5 illustrates, Joe is inside the vertical at the
address position.
From the final back swing in Figure 6, he therefore raises
his body slightly in order to complete the shot in Figure
7.
If he didn't, his backhand would hit his chest and prevent
the cue following through. This entailed him dropping his
elbow as he came through so that his cue hand finished towards
his chin. Very few top players play like that today.
The trace is taken from pictures specially posed for his
book. Joe was not actually playing in a match, but nevertheless
he is doing something he never realized he did.
When
I tried to put into practice what Joe advocated, especially
the cue action with one's forearm acting as a pendulum,
I found it difficult because I couldn't get my hand past
my chest. I began to experiment to prevent this happening.
At first I started to turn my body in every conceivable
direction in order to cue along a straight line and get
well through the ball.
I found that with my left arm straight, I always felt I
was holding myself off the ball. The time had come to experiment
with my left arm bent, which meant I could get the whole
of my forearm on to the table.
Later
it came home just how important it was to have a very firm
bridge hand (Figure 8). I got into the habit of not only
having a firm base for my 
bridge
hand but also pressing my first finger into the cloth. I
realized that a firm bridge hand was a great asset to straight
cueing, and this is where the baulk line came into the picture.
As
far as I know, no one writing about snooker has used the
baulk line before as a guide to straight cueing. Amazing,
really, a straight line across the table, which has been
there for everyone to see since snooker was invented!
Following this there came a time when friends at my club
noticed that on cueing at the cue ball - when I was doing
the preliminary waggles - my right elbow was gradually moving
over. At first I didn't believe them. In the end to prove
what was happening, a friend stood with a cue up - right
to one side of my elbow. As I proceeded to waggle my cue,
I noticed that my elbow was brushing against the other cue.
I
began to work on the problem but found out that I just could
not stop moving the elbow. Then it suddenly hit me that
while I was dropping my elbow I was still potting balls.
Now I returned to the baulk line and to start with put my
elbow in the position in which it finished up after completing
the waggles. In other words, I was purposely playing like
Ray Reardon does - with my elbow well over to the right
- and I was still able to make the cue go through straight.
The
next stage was to try to play with my elbow tucked in like
Fred Davis, exactly the opposite of Ray's stance. What happened?
In both cases I was able to pot balls, and this told me
that my cue was still going through straight on line despite
the elbow being bent one way or the other.
I am convinced that it was not a question of where my elbow
was that helped me to pot balls; it was all about sighting.
As long as I looked at the correct spot on the object ball,
it didn't matter whether my elbow was sticking out right
or left. It was not important at all.
Figure 9, 10 and 11 shows the three different positions
of the elbow. In Figure 9, the elbow protrudes to the right,
a style adopted by Ray Reardon and Cliff Thorburn. Even
John Parrott's elbow is slightly to the right. In Figure
10 everything is in line - elbow, left eye and cue, while
in Figure 11 the elbow is leaning in towards the body, the
style of Fred Davis.
A straight left arm seems to encourage a tendency for the
elbow of the cue arm to fall inwards to the body. Strangely
enough, having accepted 
that
my elbow was moving, it was not until a good while later
that I realized I was no longer doing this, and I haven't
done so since.
Steve Davis in the early 80's, developed a good straight
cue action. He held his cue with his wrist slightly bent
to the right; which took the grip more into the fingers.
He continued playing like that until he had won two, possibly
three, world championships.
Then Steve actually straightened his hand and everything
was in a straight line - wrist, forearm, elbow.
This
just proved that while Steve's wrist was cocked slightly
to the right, he was still able to send the cue through
on a straight line. I have often been asked why Steve changed
his grip if it was good enough to make him world champion.
It was because, as he learnt so much about the game, he
realized that if he was to become the perfect model and
absolutely in line with his cue action, the one thing wrong
- if you can call it that - was his wrist being slightly
cocked outwards.
Steve has so much knowledge and talent that he was able
to adapt without any trouble. To us lesser mortals this
would have been a problem, but not to him. Everything fell
into place and it was easy for him to change.
