- Practicing the quality of follow shots, making sure the cue is level at the maximum height or even tilted slightly upwards. This seems to help a lot with consistency, and it is a very subtle skill to develop.
- Practicing hitting ball fractions exactly from anywhere on the table, and recognizing that you actually did in fact hit the correct fraction. I am currently down to 1/3, 1/4, 1/5. 1/6th are quite hard but achievable.
- Ensuring that your tip hits the cue ball exactly where your brain intends it to, and the cue continues in a straight line, (slightly upwards if follow, level if center, down into the table if draw)
- Watching a tremendous number of matches to make your shot selection match that of pros
- Feeling kiss situations and making adjustments necessary
- Really working hard on your pre-shot routine so that it becomes carved in stone. For example
- Look at table
- Choose correct shot based off of knowledge
- Run your mental simulator over and over again until your brain gives you the ball-fraction-tip-location combination for that shot
- Taking care to set up and align each shot, and then execute precisely
When I do all of these things, I play very well, and it gives me a lot of confidence that my mental simulator CAN solve these problems, which even surprises me sometimes of some of the shots I attempt and actually make with deliberation. The challenge is to keep the mental simulator from getting worn out and losing focus, which I suppose is the ultimate challenge of this game.
I definitely do need to practice a small number diamond systems to help with mental shortcuts and saving brain power, but I am not convinced that I should be spending a huge amount of energy on numerical systems compared to functional skill development.
What are your thoughts?
