stuartbingham.com

STUART BINGHAM was very pleased with the feel of his new cue this month – and is now itching to use it in top-class action.

The 2015 world champion has been supplied bespoke equipment by the Cue Creator team, an American company which is headed up by the Sharp family and uses cues manufactured by McDermott Cues made in Menomonee Falls.

Bingham started using it on the practice table on the weekend and says it immediately had a positive impact on his game.

Ballrun said: “I got it after Riga and used it for practice and I knocked in a ton and four or five fifties, so it feels good. It just feels like it has a bit more life in it than my old cue, and I hope that margin of improvement can pay off for me.

STUART BINGHAM will be looking to sneak ahead in his all-square career head-to-head record with good friend Mark Davis in Latvia this week.

Ballrun, 41, and the Battler from Hastings, 44, have played 22 times and it is 11 wins apiece heading into the best-of-seven at the Kaspersky Riga Masters on Friday morning (June 23).

They can barley be split on frames won either, with Bingham on 76 and Davis 73 – or on the golf course for that matter.

Davis is world ranked number 37 and has reached four ranking semi-finals and has won the Six-Red World Championship three times, and Bingham is braced for another nip-and-tuck battle.

The world No 9, who beat Li Hang to book his place at the Arena Riga, said: “Mark is just a solid player, he is consistently seven out of ten and you just have to play very well to beat him. I guess that is why the record is so close.

“And we are good friends too, with go for meals together and our wives get on, and I share the same birthday as his son.

“I’ve played him at golf at few times in the past. It is pretty even there too, although I did used to get the better of him a bit when I was playing off five or six.”