Weekend with Ronnie V

Palmetto cue said:

Just had to post on what a great honor it was to get to come to NY and spend time with Ron Vitello! It was my first time in the Big Apple and Ron gave me the tour delux. I was lucky to have become good friends with Ron via the over the phone lessons he was giving me. I couldn't wait to meet him in person. We toured the city, took in the rooms, took in the sites. It was a blast! Beautiful city, beautiful time!
Now for the instruction. Fantastic! He has a wealth of knowledge on the game. The most impressive aspect of his teaching is simplicity. He makes it simple. His fundamentals are solid and make sense. His diamond systems are eye opening with repeatable results. I have been using his 90/90 aiming system taught over the phone for about a year. When he first started explaining it to me. I would experiment with it on and off. Then one day I decided I would follow it through, and I played every shot with 90/90. When I had problems Ron would talk me through it. My problem was that it was a very simple system that I kept wanting to over complicate. Ron was able to get me out the weeds every time. Thanks Ron. Now I thought I knew quite a bit about 90/90, but I soon found out that I had much more to learn. Ron showed some flaws in my stroke, and delivery. He also cleared up some wrong notions I had on when to use 90/90, and when to use 90/half ball hits. Can't wait to practice what I've learned. I highly reccomend getting some lessons from Ron. He makes it fun, and you learn a lot. Quite a few pros have taken lessons from Ron, and now I know why.
I'm not trying to start another aiming thread here. I just wanted to give due credit to Ron for all his hard work, and share with every one what a great teacher he is. If you really want to improve your game, give him a visit. He's a great all around guy, and he makes a pretty sporty omlet lol. Thanks Ron for being such a fine host and showing me your city. Most of all, thanks for being a such good friend. :thumbup:

Click to expand...

Sounds like you had an awesome experience! Any place I can read up on that aiming system?

vincentwu817 said:

Sounds like you had an awesome experience! Any place I can read up on that aiming system?

Click to expand...

Cleary made a pdf on the 90/90 system. Here is the thread but the link no longer takes you to the file. Try a pm to Cleary he will probably send you the pdf.

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=221682

What a great post.....thanks
randyg

I appreciate the comments, Mikey. I think it'll be a week or two before you get the smile off your face. :thumbup: You're right. Ron has a ton of advanced info and isn't afraid to pass it around. I'm glad you had the chance to meet him in person and find out. That's on the list for me, too.

Best,
Mike

I've been blessed to spend a lot of time with Ron as well. He's played such a large part in the development of my game. Nobody simplifies pool like Ron. He's also one of the most knowledgeable instructors I've ever met.

Ron's a huge asset to pool.

Ron sure is a nice guy. I need to give him a call just to say hi, haven't talked with him for quite awhile.

Ron is a great guy. I hadn't seen him in a long time until Saturday, he was at Amsterdam and caught my match. It was good to see him. I used a lot of things he taught me to win that match.

U R A Lucky Dog, Palmetto Cue

Thanks for the report about Ron V.

He sounds like a great guy who knows pool. If I ever get to the Big Apple I would surely take in a pool lesson from him.

JoeyA

Congrats Palmetto on your experience with Ron. I've heard nothing but great things about him and his teaching ability.

I had a series of lessons with Ron about 2-3 months ago.

He quoted me 50/hr 2 hr minimum.

I left my job EARLY and took the train.

I got there, Eastside Billiards, right on time and he was still with another student. So, I grabbed a table (15 bucks for the night) and warmed up.

He explained the system, (and he said the system had adjustments)

It's pretty simple. Works on 90% of shots 90% of the time, so if you do it, you should be making 81% of your shots.

In a nut shell -

If you're cutting a ball to the right, you start on the right edge of the cue ball and aim it at the right edge of the object ball. Think 1/4 to 1/4. Then you pivot to center and fire away. Same thing if you're shooting the object ball to the left.

Sounds easy enough, but I couldn't get it to work.

And I kept doing it, and doing it...and just when I was about to give up, I started sinking balls in the center of the pocket. It took about 40 minutes of the 2 hour session.

It was incredible. It's not something I could really believe at all.

I remember when Hal Houle first hit RSB and I just recently I ordered the Shuffet dvd. I'm not going to rehash the entire CTE debate, but there's something to these methods. But it's not something that translates on to video or in words.

The main issue I find with these kind of systems, is that you need someone to really check your own alignment and your stroke.

For me, it was actually really hard to make sure that my stick was really aligned with the 1/4 of the cue ball and then with the 1/4 of the object ball. Not hard as in physically hard, but I sure as hell couldn't tell that I wasn't lined up, because my eyes and brain told me different. And with my stroke, I needed a shorter bridge to ensure that i'd hit straight.

Ron made those corrections

And then it started to work. I didn't believe it at first, but it did.

And then his leg started to bother him, and he had to cut the lesson short.

We agreed to meet again at the same time the following week.

Lesson #2, called him 30 mins before hand and let him know that the job was holding me up and i'd be 10 minutes late. He told me he had forgot and wasn't even @ the pool hall.

I got there and he showed up and we started the 2 hour lesson...most of it was getting back into the 90/90 frame of mind. About an hour into it, he was having some issues with his leg and he cut it short.

Because of my schedule, I asked to change the day. And he agreed.

lesson #3 attempt - I call him to make sure he was going to be at the pool hall, and he wasn't and said that we agreed on the previous day.

Lesson #3 was basically a repeat of the past 2 lessons. He showed me the same 90/90, and just as soon as we're going on to some new things...well you guessed it.

I set up one last lesson, but I called him ahead of time and he didn't pick up. He ended up calling an hour later, but by then it was too late for me. I thank him for what he's taught me, but I haven't tried to schedule another lesson. If I could meet earlier in the day, or had weekends off like regular people, I'd definitely try to do it again.

Since being on my own with 90/90, i've found that when it works, it really works - but there's still some uncertainty for me on some shots.

- those almost straight shots, where you're not sure if it's straight or going left or right

- shots where the distance between the cue and object ball is less than 1 diamond

I'm going to assume that these are some of the adjustments that he referred to.

Otherwise, i've managed to use 90/90 to make shots in practice and in league matches that I don't think should go. If I could take a week off and work my pool game as hard as I do my regular job, I think I could make it my permanent game. But ~10 hours of practice a week spread over 3 days, isn't cutting it for me yet..