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But that it worked for CJ Willey is an empirical fact (or at least as close to an empirical fact as one can expect in the rather fuzzy world of billiards performance). So when I started thinking about it and I did not understand what the benefit was, I realised that there was a gap in my understanding that I wanted to fill if I could.
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A pro is not necessarily a good instructor, and more so not necessarily good at explaining how/why he does certain things. A good example is the subjective experience of how the aiming process works, people who aim by feel might have some subjective experience of doing certain actions before arriving at the end result, e.g. having a certain eye pattern or visualizing certain things, but at the end of the day those visualizations/eye patterns/etc. might not really be relevant for improving the aiming process, they are just the triggers that they have ingrained from thousands of repetitions which activate the subconscious aiming process.
From such pro's own perspective, they might advocate that, for example, their specific/quirky eye pattern or mental thought before locking their final aim helps in aiming when teaching new players, without realizing that the relevant part is that this pattern works as an ingrained trigger, not that the pattern itself helps in aiming.
Much in the same way, I can see CJ Wiley learning to play with TOI and getting good results, then advocating TOI for others and associating his success with it, when in reality he probably would've been just as good had he always played without TOI and getting used to aiming without it.
