[台球资料一]Dominic Dale专访

Master · 发表于 2011-5-23 23:50:15

RC: Did you collect things from snooker players of past eras like Joe Davis or Alex Higgins?
DD: Oh yes. I’ve still got 3 books by Joe Davis all signed by him but they’re not worth a massive amount because Joe was a prolific signer. I’ve had Fred Lindrum autographs and I’ve had Walter Lindrum autographs and I’ve had photographs signed by them as well and they sold for like ￡1000 – ￡1200 each.
I had a solid silver salver which had an inscription to a promoter Bill Camkin who ran the international billiards tournament in 1931 which was such a big success they didn’t even hold the world championships in billiards that year because it couldn’t have lived up to the international championship Bill Camkin promoted. I got that through a distant relative of Bill’s about 7 or 8 years ago and it was a wonderful thing to have, it had the signatures of the four main players engraved into it and I loved that! But I sold it on because when I moved to Vienna I decided to sell everything. 
You know when you grow up you go through different phases and get different tastes and different interests? Well I had all the knowledge but I didn’t really have the affinity for billiards anymore and I just thought I’d rather get rid of it (the collection) now, I’d rather have the money!
RC: Speaking of billiards, have you tried your hand at 3 cushion?
DD: Well in Vienna it’s a very popular game, they call it carambolage and I’ve tried it but it’s very difficult because the cushions are very different to snooker cushions, and the tables are lightning fast because they have built in heaters and the balls run on forever. I’ve watched it on Eurosport a few times and I like watching it. It’s a great game. I have tried it a little bit, we had a sports open day in Vienna and I played for about an hour just for fun. 
RC: Did you make any runs?
DD: I had 4 consecutive 3 cushion cannons.
RC: That’s pretty good!
DD: It’s alright. I’ve got knowledge of the angles but if you see the way the cushions play they’re very different and it catches you out because they come off in different ways to what you expect they will. They play a bit like 9-ball pool cushions, they slide more. It’s a different type of cushion rail to snooker, it doesn’t have a sort of nose to it, it’s more a diamond shaped cut so the balls come off so differently. But I think if I decided to go over to the game it would only take me a few days to get the hang of the cushions and I might make runs of 8, 10, 12 cannons but it’s a difficult game, my goodness!
RC: Do any matches stick in your head as being particularly satisfying or devastating?
DD: I don’t think I’ve ever said this before in an interview because I’ve not been asked but matches that stick with me… I’ve always loved China so to actually win the final in Shanghai from 6-2 down was massive. The way I played in the evening session, great satisfaction. If somebody said which is the tournament of the two ranking events I’ve won that I liked the most then it’s Shanghai. Of course you had everything with the blonde hair and bright pink shirts and the way I played in the last session to come back, and playing in China, it was just heaven for me really.
The most devastating loss I ever had was as far back as 1994 or 95. I was 9-4 up on Gerard Greene in the World Championships at the interval.
RC: Which round was this?
DD: It was either the last qualifying round for the Crucible or the penultimate qualifying round. But I was 9-4 up and the miss rule was in its infancy and different referees had different interpretations of it. The referee was John Williams and I thought he was overly harsh with miss rule. But the problem was Gerard had won 5 frames in a row and it was 9-9 and I was 25 up on the yellow and I messed it up completely. I had the chance but I was paralysed with fear and anxiety. Gerard had missed the pot and fluked a snooker on me and I was bridging over the blue and the yellow was behind me so it wasn’t in my sight and I missed it by a fraction one way then missed it by a fraction the other side, third time I went in off in the middle pocket and Gerard cleared up.
That was a devastating blow and it must’ve had a big big impact on my whole attitude towards snooker because it took me a long time to get over that. It had a profound effect on the way I thought of snooker as a sport. Through that match I thought about the cue I used, I thought about technique and was I right to play the way I did? I played with a raw natural style, as natural as say a Joe Swail or Matthew Stevens or Selby, but it just wasn’t text book. So it altered the whole way I thought about snooker and I’ve never really been a natural player since, I’ve become more of a technical player. 
In other words when I’m cueing I’m half looking at the table and balls and pockets, but half of me thinks of the bridge hand and the arms and the back hand and striking the ball. But there’s pressure on so many players these days and standards are so high that even the natural players think about their cue action. It’s very difficult to play shots naturally and never think of your cue action. 
RC: I think you’re a natural player; you flow around the table when you’re playing well and never seem to get too bogged down. 
DD: Yes well I try not to but sometimes I do bog myself down but I never play well when I do that to myself. But the good thing is all those things I want to do with my game, slow myself down a little bit, you do all these things anyway as you get older with experience so it’s alright to do it now but if I was in my 20s… it’s not a good thing to be a fast player and then become a slow player. It’s much better to be a slower player and try to speed your game up.
There’s been a lot of proof of that over the years like Ebdon. People will say that he was a better player when he was in his late amateur days and early pro days because he was a faster more fluent player with a lot of flair. He’s completely tempered that and that’s just a classic example of the way professional players think. They analyse the game and try and work out the best way that suits them.
RC: Graeme Dott seems to have sped up since his World title.
DD: And so has Mark Selby. I don’t know whether it suits Mark to try to speed his game up but he seems to have gone back to his old self again which is better for him in my opinion.
RC: I wonder if he was affected by the BBC always showing a clock when he exceeded one minute thinking time on certain shots and people started to call him a slow player.
DD: Yes that’s only for some shots obviously when you’re in a particularly difficult situation, I mean nobody wants to spend a minute on every shot obviously. Pressure makes you play slowly sometimes and if you’re a fast player sometimes it makes you play a bit quicker than you want, it depends on who you are and the way you think. 
If you look at someone like Graeme, Graeme is a natural player. He sort of lurches into the shot, he’s got a very unusual style but one of his biggest strengths is his mental attitude. He’s a fantastic fighter. As most of the Scottish players are. There aren’t many fast attacking Scottish players, they all seem to be very solid all round players that are very tough to beat.
RC: I was watching Jamie Burnett yesterday against Liang Wenbo and he seemed to start off very quickly but towards the end he slowed down a lot, and you kept thinking he’s going to miss here because he looked under pressure, but he kept on potting those balls and making centuries.
DD: Jamie Burnett is an underestimated player. He can play fantastic snooker. I mean he’s got the highest recorded professional break.
RC: Yes 148.
DD: Yes bizarre isn’t it? But he’s a very dangerous player and he’s an all-round player again. I think Jamie will tell you himself he’s certainly not a fast player, he’s more medium speed. He’s the same kind of speed for me as Alan McManus. He’s certainly not a fast player but he can play all the shots, he’s a good safety player, good tactician but he’s an attacking player also and has got a good balance.
RC: In 2020 when you look back on this decade who will be the stand out players in your opinion?
DD: There is one area that snooker fanatics and players themselves don’t know anything about yet and that is: how good can you be in your late 40s? We’ve only got Steve to go by and he was in a slightly different era so perhaps at his best he wasn’t as good as O’Sullivan and Hendry and John Higgins so it’ll be interesting when these guys are in their mid-40s just to see how good they are, see how confident they are and see if they can still win tournaments. As players we don’t know how long we can last at the very best of our form.
RC: Do you think Higgins and O’Sullivan are that far ahead of the field that they will still be the top names in 10 years’ time? Do you see anybody coming up to challenge them?
DD: I don’t see anybody coming through the game like you did when you had Paul Hunter coming through or Matthew Stevens, Mark Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins. None of the Chinese guys for me are anywhere near that particular league. Possibly because they don’t play the right sort of game yet, because they learnt most of their game in China.
RC: There’s a lot of do or die. They like to seem to test themselves with some strange shots.
DD: Yes. And some of the Chinese don’t seem to possess a good touch and seem to crash long balls in, they don’t play with the same sort of finesse as British players do who have always practiced with each other and learned from watching the game on TV from their young days. 
There is one Chinese player that I like the look of. I don’t know how old he is, I don’t think he’s much more than 16 but he’s a beautiful touch player, strikes the ball beautifully and has a fabulous technique and that’s a guy called Chen Zhe. 
He played in a few PTCs and he’s a very good player. By the time he’s 20 I don’t see any reason why he can’t be something like Ding. He’s got that much potential. But of course a lot can go wrong, you don’t know what life will throw up, you could meet a lady, get married, have children.
RC: Judd Trump a few years ago as a junior was supposed to be winning World titles now according to some people.
DD: Yes but who says these kinds of things because it’s certainly not the snooker players. It’ll be the journalists and the public.
RC: Yes they spot these kids who are 10 or 11 years old and making century breaks. Like at the moment a lot of people are talking about Luca Brecel.
DD: Luca is a great player because he’s got an all-round game. He’s a fantastic break builder and hits the ball great. He’s got massive, massive potential. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and a good family background and good guidance from the players in Belgium that practice with him. So I don’t see any reason why he can’t be a champion.
As for Judd well, he’s an unbelievable scorer and break builder. I don’t know what he thinks of his performances as a professional so far. Maybe he’d have liked to have done a little bit better than he has, but he’s certainly dangerous and he’s very capable of winning some major matches. I don’t see enough of him to make any criticism as such but it’s possible he doesn’t have the best balance in his game in terms of his tactical play and safety play. But as a scorer and a potter and a good temperament he’s certainly got all that. So as long as he doesn’t put pressure on himself or allow other people to put pressure on him he’ll be ok.
RC: So you think Chen Zhe is the name to look out for?
<div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_1430" style="WIDTH: 310px"><a href="http://www.snookerisland.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/domanmes.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1430" title="the obligatory=" height="185" alt="" src="http://www.snookerisland.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/domanmes-300x185.jpg" width="300" handshake? interview="interview" post="post" obligatory?/></a>
the obligatory post interview handshake</div>
DD: I do. I watched him in a few of the PTCs and he looks to be learning. His shot selection for someone of 16 is excellent. He plays many wrong shots but his thinking is good, I like the way he thinks. He shows me that he’s going to learn. Some players are so one dimensional in the way they play the game they’ll never learn. Some players are too selfish or know it all that they won’t listen to other people but Chen doesn’t strike me as someone like that so definitely I think he’s one to look out for.
And on that note I concluded the interview so we could both go and watch the final section of qualifiers try and reach the venue they all so desperately want to play at, The Crucible Theatre. Dominic is certainly a one off and has already stamped his own unique mark on the game he is so passionate about, and his enthusiam may yet lead him to further glory. He clearly still has the hunger to do well and if he can switch off and enjoy himself as he did in Shanghai, then his future could still have more fruits to bear.
I ended up leaving bleary eyed after an exhausting weekend before the conclusion of the last couple of matches but Dominic, ever the snooker fanatic, was still firmly engrossed in the action. Once a snooker fan always a snooker fan.

[此贴子已经被作者于2011-5-24 0:18:14编辑过]

飘 · 发表于 2011-5-24 07:37:13

他好像也有只小鸟

ABCD1234 · 发表于 2011-5-24 09:04:34

英文不行啊~~

cgcollection · 发表于 2011-5-24 09:29:56

戴尔个人更倾向于更硬更轻一些的球杆，因为他认为自己是一个全面的选手，太弹的不需要，太重的感觉击球要差一些，从ROBERT OSBOURNE那里跳出了一个前肢，可以说是千里挑一啊。做成了现在的球杆了。

musicman720 · 发表于 2011-5-24 10:52:38

又是一个纹路派！！别总说中国人难伺候了。。。

Master · 发表于 2011-5-25 04:03:57

TO musicman720：虽说他看纹路，但最近两场，包括世锦比赛，他的新球杆纹路是N多箭头。
TO yinyufei：戴尔专访，因为提到不少球杆的内容，所以拿来分享。
 
感谢cgcollection代为翻译2L的部份内容。
 
3L提到了一些古董球具的介绍，包括 Ye Olde Ash Cue（第一版）的故事--这可以说是一个传说，在球杆收藏爱好者口中广为留传，但是实物，甚至只是图片，不知道有几人有幸见过。英文水平有限，期待有心人代劳一下了。

[此贴子已经被作者于2011-5-25 4:21:43编辑过]

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[台球资料一]Dominic Dale专访

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