The Price of Performance
© 2010 Mike Fieldhammer, BilliardCoach.com
What does golf have in common with pool? Answer: Players look for the quick fix to improve their performance. Verdict: Expensive equipment makes a difference. You get what you pay for in life and there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Take a small thing like the tip on your current cue. Have you pampered it by shaping, shaving, scuffing or tapping it? I would think that you have. Players realize that a good tip plays better and that some tips outperform other tips. Moori and Kamui layered tip costs around $40 installed. These tips not only last longer, but also provide a more consistent hit from the first use to the end of the tips life. A LePro or Triangle tip can be had for as little as $15 if you find some backwater cue repair guy. The truth is that the layered tip typically has 8 or more thin layers of leather but it only provides roughly three times the performance. This makes perfect sense when you figure that there is a point of diminishing returns on layers, but the Price/Performance ratio is almost exactly the true 3:1.
OB and Predator have gone to great lengths to “Over-Engineer” a pool cue shaft. The complicated manufacturing and assembly of these high tech shafts has up to 4 times the waste and 20 times the glue used in a solid “Old-School” maple shaft. These shafts cost 2 to 3 times more than traditional shafts that come standard with most pool cues. In exchange, you get a shaft that reduces cue ball squirt and increases accuracy. Here again, a player can leverage their equipment to have a significant edge on their opponents playing with yesterday’s state of the art, today’s obsolete shaft.
Why on earth would you use caveman tools while working on the space shuttle? Precision counts. The best and naturally most expensive joint configurations of 2010 are the Radial Pin and Uni-Loc joint both made by the same company. These joints assure a solid feeling cue stick when the butt and shaft are put together. If the cue was built by a competent cue maker, the cue should end up dead straight.
A high performance cue stick made by a high end builder with the finest components and a quality tip will outperform lesser cues and offer the owner an advantage that can be bought. You may say, “But what if I’m not that good of a player to notice or to make use of all that cue?” Well, a 650 horsepower Ferrari may never break 100 miles per hour on rural roads in the United States, but short flashes of supercar performance will be evident even driving at Hyundai speeds. Acceleration, handling, and braking will all be superior even driving within the speed limit. If by accident, the pedal is depressed to the floor, the Ferrari will make every driver faster be they a Professional or Learner’s Permit driver. Equipment does matter. Don’t short change your pool game in order to save some pocket change.
It’s no accident that Tiger Woods gets prototype golf clubs to test that may never hit the production line. They are technically legal for him to use in competition, but are so expensive to build that they couldn’t possibly be a profitable consumer product. That’s just one of the perks that comes from being the #1 golfer in the world (the others belong on a different website). Thankfully for pool players, some equipment upgrades can be done for under $10 like a couple of cubes of Blue Diamond chalk.
The debate about whether or not equipment improves play is over. It absolutely does. There are still options out there though, so it really just comes down to finding the right fit. The best way is to try a number of different cues side by side, so that you can feel the difference. That way you won’t spend money on something that turns out to be nothing more than a failed experiment. As a billiard coach, I am happy to answer your equipment questions or need advice on shaft selection. Feel free to drop me a line or give me a call.
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