9-Ball
Topic: best cues top players use?

I defer to your superior knowledge Si, the information was taken from the player's profiles on the WPC site.

I wonder how many players actually have to purchase their own cues and how many of them play with sponsored cues?

Another very interesting point Peter. I am led to believe Earls contract with Cuetec is worth $200,000 a year. I am sure he would like to shoot with the beautiful hand made cues like he did in the 1980s but the mighty $ is a strong lure.

In Rodney Morris' case, he always preferred to shoot with what was better for him (after a brief stint with Fury). He has used a Szamboti for most of his career and he won the US Open with one (This cue is for sale by the way people if you have $20,000 spare...I can pass you his mobile ) Recently he bought a John Showman....yes...bought. A lot of the smaller one man custom operations are exactly that. A lone man with a family and bills to pay. No matter how big the player, the maker just can't afford to give a cue away.

Just the bigger operations sponsor and give cues away like McDermott, Joss, Pechauer, Meucci, Mezz, etc.

On 2007-02-03 10:47 , thediamond Wrote:

i bet he gets bonus's for extra press etc coverage when he's being an idiot

On 2007-02-03 10:47 , thediamond Wrote:

Hello,
I know this has been said several times before but I honestly don't think a player of Earl's calibre would play with a cue he thought was damaging or limiting his game. If he thought he could start winning major events again by switching cues, regardless of the financial cost, I'm sure he'd do it. On the other hand he has a relationship with a company who have stuck by him for years and which clearly works both ways.

The one thing that does make me chuckle is that Earl doesn't play with the Cuetec Earl Strickland model. Why don't they just make the model he does use his signature model instead as it's also a production model!

Thanks,
Chris

lol, i never noticed that. Earl has quite a lot of shaft work done to those Cuetecs. I seriously can't belive people can shoot with those shafts. Give me a 4oz+ maple shaft any day!!!

Chris

Famously (only famous if you know the story) during one year of the Mosconi Cup, Earl stormed away from the TV table after a loss, marched into the players lounge and launched his Cuetec through the air, just missing a couple of players and impaled it through the stud wall partition...much to the suprise of everyone (or not?). He proceeded to tell everyone that he didn't know how they expected him to win matches with this piece of *expletive*.

Draw your own conclusions. Like Peter said, he makes do with what he has got and he could shoot better than 99% of us with a broomstick.

One interesting point, I had a famous encounter with him myself at the World Championships in Cardiff. I examined his cue up close and the shafts were of very high quality indeed. I mean very high quality. I am not saying Cuetec didn't make them but I have no hesitation in saying they were different from standard production shafts.

It's unlikely he's using an off the shelf Cuetec. I suspect it would be essentially a custom cue... just like all the top sportsmen, tiger woods, federer etc etc, they're not using the same equipment you buy in the shops but custom stuff that looks very similar to the stuff we can buy ...

Hello,
Oh I know he doesn't use an off-the-shelf cue and that he spends ages preparing the shafts before he uses them. I'm just saying Earl is a very, very proud man and I think he would put performance before money if he thought another cue would revolutionise his game again.

JMHO!!

Thanks,
Chris.