This is an idea I have had for a long time. I would love to see the snooker media make it happen.
The idea is to measure exactly how accurate certain shots were played.
We would especially focus on the longpots. I would just like someone to do the math because I can't but would like to know.
A
snooker table is twelve feet long, a snooker ball is 52.5 milimeters. A cuetip is 8 or nine millimeters wide.
Say Jimmy White brakes of and leaves a longpot for Stephen Hendry. Tricky to take on. There is no road back to safety so a shot to nothing is not on. However, a good kiss on another red would leave the black available. Then again, a miss would leave multiple reds and the black readily availible. What to do? Play safe like the oldfashioned style of play or go for it and secure the frame at one visit? Stephen Hendry was never one to ignore a challenge. In fact, taking this kind of risk is his hallmark and with it he changed the game forever, setting a new standard.
So lets say Jimmy got a pretty good break off shot, as is he normally does. The white is a five millimeters from the balk cushion. He gets applause. On red got out. Just hovering there some five cetimeters from the black cushion, twenty from the left black pocket. A thin cut.
One other red in the open, one by the cushion, safe.
A good break by any standerd.
Distance between red on and white: 11 feet and a half and a bit(I never could get the hang of feet versus centimeters).
I would guess that with the ball being 52,5 millimeters and it being located twenty centimeters from the pocket you would have about half a millimeter to hit to pot.
The direction of the cue 11 feet and half (and a bit)away would have to be precisely.... Well I don't know but it would have to be pretty precise.
All this would be tested in a laboratory situation with exact maesuring and just calculating from previously played shots in tournaments.
With my limited grasp of maths and physics I think that the outcome would dazzle anybody.
It would be proven that these players are accurate to within thousands upon thousands of millimeters.
So the idea is just to prove people can be that accurate, we see it on tv but now it is mathematically proven.
This astounding revelation would get us to think further about man's capabilities and about the direct impact of quantum physics in our daily lives, if you happen to play snooker daily.
And I haven't even mentioned the occasional supershot or astounding fluke.
This could also be done with other sports.
All sportsmen and women sometimes experience a certain high, that enables them rise rise above themselves. I say it enables them to rise above the normal everyday physics that govern our lives and they trangsress into the world of quantum physics, or at least a world of highly improbable accuracy.
Let's get the scientists to tell us about it. Or maybe a halfbaker can shed some light on this if he or she feels so inlclined.