As
long as you are well balanced, the stance is not as important
in my view as it has often been made out to be. 
We
are human beings, not automatons. We are all different and
as in golf, everyone uses a slightly different stance. Tiger
Woods, David Duval and Colin Montgomery all address the
ball differently, but achieve the same objective by hitting
it in a straight line.
It's the same in snooker.
I
don't believe any two players in the professional ranks
adopt the same stance, but they can achieve the same objective,
which is to cue straight and true. It is not essential to
put your back foot here and your front foot there. You don't
have to have your elbow behind the shot and you don't have
to grip your cue in a certain manner.
With
regard to stance, I would go along with the official line
only as far as bracing your back leg, leaning forward and
bending the front leg in order to move into the shot. A
player's weight needs to be distributed so that his body
does not move as he swings his cue arm, but other than that
I forget about stance and concentrate on getting the cue
moving along a straight line.
Steve Davis makes the point that if anyone ever tried to
push him off balance, he would waver not to the left, right
or backwards, but only forwards.
What
you need to do is to put the cue on-line and then whichever
eye you are going to use, right, left, or, if even-sighted
both, adopt a stance which is natural for either the left,
right or both eyes to drop naturally over the cue.
When
you get down to play, put your cue on a straight line to
your intended shot and place your body to the cue rather
than putting your body in place and then the cue to the
body. Even players who don't do this now will find little
difficulty in changing.
I would say that ninety-nine per cent of players operating
this method get down until their cue is just brushing their
body so they feel the cue is in a familiar place. It is
reassuring to feel that you are using the same set-up every
time. This is what we are after: consistency,
the hallmark of class.
Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and John Parrott all face along
the line of the shot and ignore the official line about
the body and feet being in a certain position at an angle
to the target. This is where I am at variance with the teachings
in most instructional books.
John Spencer and Ray Reardon didn't twist the body round
so that their back foot is almost at right angles to the
shot, as recommended in many coaching circles. They move
slightly to the right, but not all the way round, so they
have also have edged away from Joe Davis's theory. They
again depart from Joe in that he had a straight left arm,
while John and Ray used to bend the arm and have the entire
forearm on the table.
Fig 1 and 2 demonstrate two different positions with the
back foot. This will not however make any difference to
the cuedelivery, proving that the position of the feet is
of no great importance.
In Fig 3 and 4, professional player Leigh Robinson demonstrates
Steve Davis's stance. The first picture is an alignment
of the feet positioning that he used to play with. Fig 4
demonstartes how he now stands. He has won world titles
with both, but his body is always facing along the line
of the shot.
It is also worth remembering that the further the cue ball
lies into the middle of the table, the more a player has
to lean over to reach it. This inevitably brings the body
face on to the line of the shot.
If
a player can play 'face on' when he is forced to, he surely
can when he has the choice when he does not have to reach
over.
Players should not be bound by principles generally laid
down in previous books. If need be, they should experiment
and find out if they can achieve their objectives in other
ways.
"What suits one player will not automatically suit another".
Discover
the stance that works best for you and do not copy others.
Try and focus on what is happening on top of the table and
not what is happening beneath.
