Sally Rooney on Snooker and the Mystery of Athletic Genius
Writing for the New York Review (archive), Sally Rooney profiles “genius” snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan. But much of the piece is spent on the mystery of how O’Sullivan and other athletes are able to do what they do without thinking.
Take the last frame of the 2014 Welsh Open final. The footage is available online, courtesy of Eurosport Snooker: if you like, you can watch O’Sullivan, then in his late thirties, circling the table, chalking his cue without taking his eyes from the baize. He’s leading his opponent, Ding Junhui β then at number three in the world snooker rankings β by eight frames to three, needing only one more to win the match and take home the title. He pots a red, then the black, then another red, and everything lands precisely the way he wants it: immaculate, mesmerizing, miraculously controlled.
The last remaining red ball is stranded up by the cushion on the right-hand side, and the cue ball rolls to a halt just left of the middle right-hand pocket. The angle is tight, awkward, both white and red lined up inches away from the cushion. O’Sullivan surveys the position, nonchalantly switches hands, and pots the red ball left-handed. The cue ball hits the top cushion, rolls back down over the table, and comes to a stop, as if on command, to line up the next shot on the black. O’Sullivan could scarcely have chosen a better spot if he had picked the cue ball up in his hand and put it there. The crowd erupts: elation mingled with disbelief. At the end of the frame, when only the black remains on the table, he switches hands again, seemingly just for fun, and makes the final shot with his left. The black drops down into the pocket, completing what is known in snooker as a maximum break: the feat of potting every ball on the table in perfect order to attain the highest possible total of 147 points.
Watch a little of this sort of thing and it’s hugely entertaining. Watch a lot and you might start to ask yourself strange questions. For instance: In that particular frame, after potting that last red, how did O’Sullivan know that the cue ball would come back down the table that way and land precisely where he wanted it? Of course it was only obeying the laws of physics. But if you wanted to calculate the trajectory of a cue ball coming off an object ball and then a cushion using Newtonian physics, you’d need an accurate measurement of every variable, some pretty complex differential equations, and a lot of calculating time. O’Sullivan lines up that shot and plays it in the space of about six seconds. A lucky guess? It would be lucky to make a guess like that once in a lifetime. He’s been doing this sort of thing for thirty years.
What then? If he’s not calculating, and he’s not guessing, what is Ronnie O’Sullivan doing? Why does the question seem so strange? And why doesn’t anybody know the answer?
You can watch that final frame on YouTube:
There’s also a short interview with Rooney about the piece and other things.
I also mention that frames of snooker are expected to continue even after competitive play has concluded. Players don’t just get to a certain number of points and then stop because they’ve won the frame; they continue until the break imposes its own conclusion. There’s something so strange and excessive about thatβit seems to belong to the realm of aesthetics rather than sport.
I used to write a lot about what Rooney examines in her essay β the effortless brilliance of top performers β under the subject of relaxed concentration. Still as fascinating as ever.
Comments 2
Bad distinction, I think. Sports are reified aesthetics - the belief that hitting a small ball a long distance with a club is beautiful and interesting and fun must precede the invention of golf as a specific game with rules, otherwise why would anyone have bothered in the first place.
The clearest example of this is something like the fair catch rule in American football. Everyone who has tossed a football around in the backyard has a raw intuitive feeling for what a good catch is and the rule is attempting to draw a bright line around those feelings, which is obviously impossible. But the aesthetics of what catching a ball feels like come first, and we try to force the sport to embody them.
I'm not a snooker fan so take that into consideration. Rooney's wonder about his skill doesn't seem all that warranted. This guy is a great player no doubt but the ease of how great he plays belies the fact that he's done these repetitive shots millions of times over years and years of practice. Not saying it's easy but it seems doable. Billiards, or snooker, has few variables. It's mostly a 2 dimensional game. Spin or English is another variable you can manipulate within the Newtonian pool table. Variables in billiards seem limited compared to basketball for instance, where there are 3 dimensions, unpredictable defenders and countless moves on the court. I mean it ain't Stephen Curry curling around a defender, turning around, stepping back to drain a 3-pointer.
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