Nice burnished sides and the ‘Out of the box’ tip shape. Considering how many times Ronnie changes his tip I would never expect to see a worn tip on his cue.

I’m sure he could play with any tip on his cue as he is generally very quick to adapt to a new tip, even half way through a match!

As you can see the tip diameter is the same size as the ferrule and why shouldn’t it be, the cue had a major overhaul last year at Stamford Cues.

The tip sides have been burnished and the tip height looks like it hasn’t been on the cue that long; let’s hope he’s had enough table time to play it in…….I’m sure he has!

Mark Selby wasn’t happy with his tip and had it changed for the semi finals and just carried on as if nothing was different; as you can see below, a very nice tip similar to the one he took off. 

He’s used an over sized tip for the size of ferule he has which is getting a little more common nowadays. Some players have had their cue for years and want to increase their tip size without changing their cue, this may be an example of that.

Again, a nice tidy tip with burnished edges; this is a tip I would quite like myself but each to their own.

Either way, he likes quite a large tip shape so it would be interesting how hard it is.

Take a look at some of his tips from last year here.

Nicely burnished sides protect the shape of the tip and he sure plays with confidence. A nice dome shape on this one.

Interesting that Peter has a black ferrule, I’m reliably informed it’s a Stamford Zenith ferrule.

Unless he likes them fitted with a low depth it looks pretty well played in but certainly not everyone’s cup of tea looking at the other professionals.

Quarter Finals John Higgins vs Kyren Wilson

Well, Kyren did in fact have a couple of miss-cues with the tip off of the cushion which started to cost him. After miss-cueing he took a short break to repair the tip mid frame. Unfortunately, when Kyren returned he miss-cued again off the cushion on an important black and that was frame over.

If you take a look at the tip after the miss-cue you can just about see a little damage on the left hand side of the tip. Because of the height it has left very little room for a decent repair so you can understand why he had further problems.

Below is Kyren’s tip in the last session. It is difficult to see if he actually did change it after the problems and tried to replicate the size at the beginning of the match; it does look slightly larger but it’s certainly difficult to tell.

Either way, tips can drive you mad and he did struggle in this match which was a shame as I’m sure he felt this might have been his year; he came up against an in form John Higgins so you have to be firing on all cylinders to match that!

I don’t know whether the tip is solid but it certainly looks it. It’s a shame we couldn’t get a closer look to see if it is in fact laminated but the focus isn’t quite there! Another standard shape though. 

Standard dome shape with a decent amount of height and takes the chalk well…….no surprises here then!

Plenty of height, well burnished and it takes the chalk nicely, what more could you want? Very neat indeed.

The tip looks well worn in and just right. A nice clean surface and the sides are very solid.I am informed that Mr Higgins uses a ‘Kamui Medium Hard’ tip for those of you that are interested.

Did John Higgins have his tip changed?

I’m told that John Higgins drove back to his cue doctor and had his tip changed as he wasn’t happy with it. Whether it’s a different tip he has it’s difficult to tell as you can see below. They look pretty similar to me but you’d expect that with a good cue doctor! Nice job…..

Again, nothing unusual about this one and it certainly plays well!

Not too much depth to the tip as it looks all dome but I’m sure it gives a decent feedback on the hit. The bit of chalk on the ferrule makes the shape look a bit misleading!

Not too much depth, not too much dome and a nice hard side to keep the tip stable. Again, it looks like a laminated tip but could be well burnished.

With hardly any depth left and a reasonable dome I usually find these tips are just about at their best before you sadly have to change them.

I guess we all like something different. This looks like a very slight trumpet tip where the ferrule size is slight smaller than the base of the dome. Barry Hawkins is a fan of this type of tip also but is a little more pronounced.

There’s certainly plenty of tip here!

A nice size tip this with no unusual features. Reasonable shape, well worn in. Not as clean cut as some pro’s tips but certainly does the job!

Marco Fu and Barry Hawkins like this set up so they all feel there’s something in it with a larger top surface area than the ferrule size. Another point of interest is it looks like the cue is worn down under the ferrule where the cue chalk is incorrectly used and catching the wood each time; rarely see that in a pro’s cue!

The tip has that crown (trumpet) shape and gives him a larger cross sectional area than the ferrule size, an interesting shape that seems to be getting more and more popular.