Poolroom Science

In an amphitheater at the University of Michigan, the eyes of 200 scientists were focused on a billiard table. The greatest billiard player of them all, Willie Hoppe, dressed in a dinner jacket and cool as a master surgeon about to operate, stood ready. But first there was a lecture from Engineering Professor Arthur Moore, a billiard player for 30 years, on his six years' experiments to make a science out of a sport. Willie Hoppe's English on the ball was not less understandable than Professor Moore's English on the theory.

The professor, author of a 41-page thesis on the subject, defined bouncibility as the "coefficient of restitution," and divided all players into two groups: amateurs, who use a "ballistic" or shoving stroke, and professionals, who use a smooth, controlled stroke, with a follow through.

High spot of the evening was Willie Hoppe's famed nine-cushion shot, in which the ball travels more than 40 feet. What baffled Professor Moore was that on the sixth and eighth cushions, the ball both lost and gained velocity. The fact is, Professor Moore discovered, that when Hoppe cued the ball with English--as any poolroom fan could have told him, though not in so many words--he gave the ball rotational energy as well as its usual translational or rolling energy. When the ball's spin slowed, the energy was turned into forward roll.

With facts & figures, Professor Moore demonstrated that the technique most good players use is scientifically superior: the pendulum stroke, with forearm swinging vertically from the elbow. Unfortunately for Professor Moore's thesis, Willie uses a sidearm stroke. It was a habit he picked up lying belly-to-billiard-table as a boy of five. Said 59-year-old Willie Hoppe: "It's too complicated for me. I guess this analysis came too late to help my game."

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