Can you be more specific? In the first rack what would you have done differently?
again, im no champion, but I feel like I understand how the game is supposed to be played having grown up watching guys like jose Garcia, jimmy fusco, allen Hopkins, mike sigel, nick varner, etc playing straight pool. I've also had the pleasure of watching efren and johnny archer in their respective straight pool premiers. I also understand that the game has changed a little and nowadays there are guys running 100's blasting the racks open. but i didn't see either method in the first two racks of this match. imagine you're watching a football game and everytime they're supposed to run the ball, they pass it or vice versa and that's the way I felt watching this match.
i'm also not criticizing either one of these players, I know both of them and while the match is a little lopsided, they are both very good players in their own right(obviously, mika is a world and us open champ). having said that, I felt that mika may have been a little too deliberate in what I saw in this match, taking a very long time to analyze situations that were actually quite elementary. additionally, I thought it was a little rude of him to occupy the right hand(as we look at it) side of the table for so long and then when he finally decides to shoot, runs right into the poor fellow playing next to him. but all of that is either here nor there and to answer your question:
the opening break was just horrible
at the 4;05 minute mark(cant believe it took 4 mins to shoot the second ball of the match), mika plays the 1 in the side to get straight in on the 14 ball hanger in the corner. the result of this shot is that he ends up having to draw the cueball off the 14 which leaves him a mild angle on the 2 ball to break open the rack. I feel this is wrong for 2 reasons. 1) the 1 ball in front of the side pocket is at the very least a nice insurance ball for later in the rack, but more importantly could be a good keyball for the end of the rack. 2) there was no reason to get straight in on the 14. it's much easier and more effective to shoot the 14 ball before the 1 ball and go one rail and out for the 2 ball. going 1 rail allows you to a) be closer to the 2 ball when shooting it and b) allows you more control over the cue ball to get the desired angle on the 2 ball rather than stiffing the cueball with a stun draw type stroke.
at the 5:05 minute mark, mika goes two rails with cueball and ends up having to hammer a ball in backpocket just to get back in line. I feel he should have stunned, killed or drew the cueball on the 13 staying down table and shoot the 5 ball next. why leave the 5 ball down there behind the stack(unless you don't think you will get a break shot). had he done that, the cue ball of the 5 should have carried natural position to get to the left hand side of the table to pick off the balls that would only go in the right hand corner pocket.
at the 5:47 mark after shooting a trick shot into the back pocket, he gets back in line to presumably shoot the 4 ball and then pick off the aforementioned balls that only go in the opposite corner pocket. instead, at a point in the rack where the break ball will clearly be on the right hand side(as we view it) of the rack, he eliminates the 6 ball from in front of the right hand side pocket. this would have been another excellent key ball and would have saved him from getting a flat angle on his next break shot.
at the 8:58 mark, mika hammers in the break shot and is naturally left with no shot. to me this is an amateur move and not some something you would expect to see from a 200 ball runner. I felt he was very flat on the break shot and that nothing good could come from hammering it in. I think he should have thrown caution to the wind and played for some kind of safety that didn't involve breaking 4-5 balls out of the rack.
did it really take 90 secs to figure out he needed to take a scratch? its almost like with the offensive nature and pressure to always make a good hit in 9-ball that the art of backscratching is becoming a thing of the past. hey guys, right church wrong pew, it's good to take a scratch.
at 13:29, finally, morgan whom I understand is somekind of 1-pocket player, sells the farm on a safety where all he really needed to do was take a scratch. this is frustrating for a few reasons. 1) if you're some kind of one pocket player and you're looking at this shot, it should be second nature to you to execute a safety without selling out every ball that will go into that pocket. 2) regardless if you are playing one pocket or straight pool, you're opponent just took a foul, why not take one as well?
at 14:20, mika hammers(again) in the 13 ball and goes one rail into the back of the pack with no insurance ball. need I say more?
I won't go into how he broke up the 11 and 6 ball earlier in the rack for no reason because it actually wasn't that bad of a shot. the 11 ball did go in the backpocket, so in the truest sense of straight pool there was no reason to break them up, but then at the same time you don't want to be shooting balls 8 feet into a corner pocket from the backrail. however, at 15:30 mika plays the 6 in the corner and breaks open a 3/9 combination that im sure if it wasn't dead would have gone. this is bad for a few reasons, 1) why break up balls that go and 2) he was on the right side of the rack to pick off a bunch of balls that only went into that one corner pocket and 3) why send more balls up the table than you have to(9 ball).
and then I turned it off. im sure I could Monday morning quarterback the rest of this match all night. ive been away from pool for a long time and was kind of excited to see all of the videos available for free online. my curiosity got the best of me and I started watching some of these videos. I had heard that mika had many runs in the 100's and I was curious to see if morgan could play straight pool so I turned on this match. one more football analogy, hoping to see an nfl game, I ended up with a slow moving and boring high school game. I guess it was my disappointment in this match that led to my post.
