How Ronnie O’Sullivan Snooker Cue Action Works.

The great thing about explaining Ronnie O'Sullivan's cue action is I don't first need to explain who he is. But as he's expressed plans to retire in just a few years, I felt we needed to have a look at his technique now, while he's still playing at the top level of the game. So what is it about his cue action that makes him the best player to have ever picked up a cue? Why is it so different from what you might find in a textbook, or from what you'll see from many of the other greatest players in the world right now? But I guess the main question is Ronnie O'Sullivan's cue action. How does it work? Ronnie O'Sullivan's been a professional snooker player for very nearly 30 years now, and for most of that he's been competing right at the top of the game. So you'd expect all of his technique to be perfect, but when you compare it to other professional players, some of it is a little unusual. But I've noticed three things about his technique specifically that could go some way to explaining why he's been the best player in the world for so long. They're certainly different, but are they actually helping his game? Ronnie's stance, however, is nearly what you'd describe as textbook. What any player learning to play the game would do well to copy. The only difference is his left foot probably is slightly further back than most players, but this is only by millimetres, so it really makes no difference. When he cues right up to the ball, his arm points straight down at a 90 degree angle, giving him the maximum room between pulling the cue back and pushing it through. The distance between his bridge hand and the cue ball is also about average for a professional player, although his bridge arm is a little bit straighter than most professionals. But again, not by very much, and it'd be incredibly unusual not to see these tiny variations. That accounts for very nearly half the technique, and so far it's exactly what you'd expect from a snooker player, professional or not. But that's where the similarities to other players end. So how is Ronnie different? Well, Peter Ebdon believed he noticed something about his game that he found fascinating. He's convinced that Ronnie plays every single shot with at least a small trace of sidespin. I'm not sure how he found that out, and it's impossible to verify. But even if it isn't true, Ronnie does seem to subscribe to a similar ideology, as he says here. But what does he mean by this? Well, I'm fairly confident he's saying it's almost impossible to strike the cue ball exactly in the centre, because you can't help but put at least a tiny trace of either left or right hand side on the ball, and this could throw the white in either direction. So is he madly suggesting that you should play every shot with a small amount of side? This is actually a lot more sensible than it sounds, because instead of worrying if you're going to accidentally impart left or right hand side on the ball, you can just go, well I'm going to play it with a small amount of right hand side and allow for that. The advantage of this is I now know for certain which way the cue ball's going to move, although I don't know by how much. But because it's such a small amount of side, I know I won't be missing by far. This is just an acceptance that it's almost impossible to play a shot without the smallest trace of sidespin. And even though I'd love to play the shot exactly straight, I'm unlikely to strike the cue ball exactly in the middle. So instead of worrying about playing a shot with side and the fact that that might make me miss, I'm just going to allow for it. And that really is probably quite sensible. I've been experimenting with all the new concepts I've discovered this week, and at the end I'll show you how well each one of them has worked. But next we're going to look at the way Ronnie delivers the cue, and that's a little bit different as well. But before we look at that, we're going to find Mario, who's from Luz, Argentina. The next thing we're going to look at is Ronnie's grip, which is fairly regular, but he does take things to extremes a bit. Because the way he grips the cue is actually incredibly fascinating. He seems to grip incredibly tightly with his first finger, but almost not at all with his thumb. This prevents the cue from wobbling around in his hand and becomes more helpful the more power he has to play the shot with. But if all of his fingers were so tight, he wouldn't be able to feel positional shots, or to get the amount of spin on the ball he's able to. The rest of his fingers are very loose. The interesting bit is, despite how loose the rest of his grip seems, his first finger seems to be wrapped around the cue incredibly tightly. This bit seems to be very tight, although his thumb doesn't actually go around the cue, it actually just points straight down. It's quite difficult to see that, but it did seem a little bit unusual. But if you get the right camera angle, you can see what his thumb is doing. The way he distributes his grip prevents his cue from wobbling around in his hand, but the looseness of it allows him to generate cue speed with maximum efficiency. We're going to be looking next at his cue action. But before that, we're going to find Thorsten from Leipzig, Germany. I probably said that all very wrong. How does Ronnie position his body when cueing up to the white? Ronnie cues up to the ball with the top of his arm tucked into his body a little bit. And as he delivers the cue, he moves it out and through, bringing his elbow down straight in line with the shot. This isn't really that unusual. To start off with, most professional players don't have their arm directly above their cue, and it doesn't seem to make too much difference. Judd Trump even moves his cue around his body, and that never seems to hold him back. The interesting thing is his left-handed cue action is different to his right. When Ronnie plays a shot right-handed, and this is a massive exaggeration, he brings his cue arm out before delivering the shot. So he brings it out and pushes it through straight on line. But when he plays the shot left-handed, he already has it out, and he brings it in straight on line like that. So he starts off with it out wide, and then brings it back straight, and then delivers it straight on line. This doesn't really matter, and I don't think it's going to help anybody, but I just found it fascinating. But something that will help you is how Ronnie's found a way around one of the biggest problems snooker players face. But what is it? This is what Ronnie does differently, and it took me a while to understand this, because the majority of players just pull their cue back and push it through forwards. But Ronnie doesn't do that. I think I've got my terminology right here, and obviously I'm going to exaggerate it so you can see. But I'm pretty sure that Ronnie's cue action takes on the characteristics of a wheel piston. What I mean by this is his cue hand moves around in a slightly circular motion to produce a smoother delivery. If you watch very closely, you should be able to see him change the level of his cue all the way through the shot. I'm exaggerating it, so you should be able to see me dipping the back of my cue down, then bringing it back up. Initially this makes it seem like Ronnie's cue action has four distinct moving sections. Three is he pulls the cue back, he initially moves his cue down and away from the wide, before bringing it back to whatever height he wants to strike the cue ball at. Then he may, if he wants to hit it harder, bring his cue back a little bit further on this line, before delivering his cue and pushing his hand straight through. So is this as jerky and robotic as it seems? Well, no. If you watch my wrist very closely, it moves around in a circle and never stops moving. So is this something Ronnie's just started doing in recent years? Well, no. As far as I can see, this has always been a part of his technique. It took me a while to work out why he was doing this. I mean, how can he play so well if he's doing that? And then I understood why. You see, one of the hardest parts of snooker to get right is to pull the cue back to exactly the right place, so it's in the right place to deliver it straight. It's very easy for your cue to wobble offline in the transition between pulling your cue back and pushing it through. You need to bring your cue back to exactly the right place to push it through straight, and this is where everything can go wrong. And despite the fact that I don't want to do it, I keep finding that I raise myself up a bit as I'm going to play the shot like this, and that's really not helping. This is why, to keep their delivery smooth, most snooker players pause at the end of their backswing. Ronnie doesn't have a pause at the end of his backswing because his cue action doesn't stop. It just goes down, back, up and around. It's one big circular motion, and that circular motion just keeps going, so there's no awkward stop and hit where you could make a mistake. But are these really benefits, and would they help out somebody like me? As I was saying earlier, I've been testing that out all week. I could see the benefits of some of these new ideas to me straight away, although it did take a little bit of time to get used to them. So even though I was getting things wrong from time to time, I was still potting more consistently when it went right, but was it actually worth it? So all week, instead of discovering when I'm down on the shot and playing it with a small trace of sidespin and changing it or doing something about it, I've just been accepting that I'm playing with a small trace of sidespin and just allowing for it, really. And it doesn't seem to have hurt my game at all. In fact, it's given me less to think about, which has allowed my game to flow a bit better, so I'd say that's definitely a small improvement. But has it made a difference to grip the cue tighter with my index finger? Again, I think this has been a slight benefit. Having this finger tighter doesn't really affect the way you can move the cue, although it does keep it in a more secure position. And what about the Ronnie Rock, as it's sometimes known? I usually pause at the end of my backswing, and I found this didn't affect the flow of that whatsoever. But what it did mean is I was able to push the cue through smoother. It didn't feel like I was ever going to miss cue at all. And this was massively helpful for a number of shots, although the main problem I had with it is I kept overdoing it. You only need to dip the cue down a little bit and bring it up a tiny bit. It's only fractions, really. It's not a huge amount. And I found if I overdid it, I just ran out of position because I'd either over or under screw shots. But really, it just improved the flow of my cueing. The main shots this helped me with was digging down off cushions. Ronnie's good at this type of shot, and this may go some way to explaining why. This also helped me with power shots. This tends to be something I struggle with, but being able to deliver the cue that tiny bit smoother was a big benefit. Overall, this will take some getting used to, especially regarding positional shots, but even if it doesn't work, at least I've learned something from one of the best players in the world right now. If you want to see what I found out when I looked at Neil Robertson's technique in exactly the same way, then have a look at this video. And remember, don't just watch play, and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel, and visit the website. See you later!