Have you ever known a player with almost zero natural talent to get good?

[justinb386]

I am curious if you have known many players that you thought had close to zero natural ability, but they really loved the game so much, that they worked very hard on their game for hours every day, and eventually became a pretty good player (at least B level for example)?

 

[hang-the-9]

I am curious if you have known many players that you thought had close to zero natural ability, but they really loved the game so much, that they worked very hard on their game for hours every day, and eventually became a pretty good player (at least B level for example)?

Many B players I know got there through hard work but can't get past that, usually due to not having enough time to play 4 hours every day, but some because they were not taught properly from the beginning and have flaws with how they shoot.

 

[pt109]

I'm having trouble getting my head around "Zero natural talent"
Only a corpse has zero natural talent...a living human being is a marvel.

I have witnessed players have epiphanies...and jump a few levels in very little time.
Getting past false modesty and big egos sometimes opens the doorway.

Buddy Hall was just another good player, he had a dream about his bridge.

 

[AtLarge]

... Buddy Hall was just another good player, he had a dream about his bridge.

You caught my interest there, pt. Please tell us more.

 

[nginear]

AtLarge,

If I remember the story correctly (what I read somewhere), Buddy Hall had a dream about his bridge. He woke up the next morning, tried what he saw in his dream, and was able to see the object ball, the cue ball, and the table better than what he had. Jumped his game up several notches. pt109 may have more info on it and will hopefully chime in.

 

[BC21]

The late Tony Ellin. I remember reading an interview where he said most players have a lot more natural talent for the game than he'll ever have. So he had to consistently be working on his game in order to compete with those guys.

The Buddy Hall dream may've been in Rags to Rifleman. Been a long while since I read it.

But I've seen newbies pick up the game in their 50's and within a year be very competitive with B level players.

 

[buckets]

yes, and his name is me!

I never had any natural aptitude for pool aside from my body being the right shape (I'm tall, thin, flexible and have a hitch-hiker's thumb on my bridge hand), and an inexplicable enthusiasm for hitting pool balls. I've always really loved to play.

I suppose the cue always felt "right" in my hands, but I'd never in my life say that I was blessed with any sort of "natural talent". I played a little bit in high school and college, but was only slightly better than my friends (which was only due to my general enthusiasm for the game).

When I was 25, I found a real pool room and started working on my game with fervor and purpose. I consider this the true beginning of my pool playing. 3 years later I'm a solid B, and usually a threat to cash out in local tourneys. I'm certainly no Efren, but I'm very pleased with my progress! My favorite are the guys who have been shooting since before I was born, yet still can't play the game for sh*t. I eat those bangers for breakfast

 

[pt109]

You caught my interest there, pt. Please tell us more.

I'm a bit vague on that...the next two posts after yours pretty well explains it....
...bought the book off Buddy a long time ago.
But I've seen a few other epiphanies....people being timid with what they already had.

A good moment for me was a friend who hit the ball well came to me and asked "What do
I have to do to get better?"...at a good weekly tournament in the 90s, he was getting the
7/8 and two games on the wire in races to 9 from the best players,and not winning....
...I knew he was going out of town for a tour tournament so I told him...
.."I want you to stay at the tournament till the last ball drops, then come back and tell me
every shot you saw that you can't do."
He called me on Monday and said "I see what you mean, I can do every one."
Two weeks later, he played on the same tour and called me right after....said..."I won!"

Three weeks later, he won the weekly tournament, playing to the top handicap.

I'm not a teacher, but that memory makes me feel good....

...but life can be hard....three years later, he died of cancer....
...we have to enjoy life while we can.

 

[justinb386]

I'm having trouble getting my head around "Zero natural talent"
Only a corpse has zero natural talent...a living human being is a marvel.

I have witnessed players have epiphanies...and jump a few levels in very little time.
Getting past false modesty and big egos sometimes opens the doorway.

Buddy Hall was just another good player, he had a dream about his bridge.

Have you even known someone who was able to run a rack within a very short time of ever picking up a cue (like within a month's time, or maybe even within a few days time of playing)? I would call that a pretty strong natural ability for the game. On the other hand, a player that played every day, but was unable to run a rack until after playing for a year for example, probably had very close to zero natural ability.

I never considered my game to be any stronger then a B level, but I never worked at getting better. I was always very lazy, and never cared to do any drills (thinking that they were too boring). I just loved to play. I never really did drills, but I learned from watching the better players. I always had very weak points to my game though. I was never good and banks, and I was never good at combination shots. Oh, I have always been scared to death of very long shots (no confidence in long shots). If I had loved the game enough to do the boring drills, then maybe I would have no fear of long shots, and could do better at banking, kicking, and combo shots (which are some of my weak points).

This one player I knew back in the 90's, at my home town pool hall, he was do drills for like 6 hours every night (after he got off of work). He would not shoot with anyone. He would just practice (drills). He did not seem to have any natural ability, but after a few years of doing drills for hours and hours every night, his form and mechanics, and stroke all turned out really good, and he turned out to be a pretty strong player (with a lot of confidence in himself, on what ever shot he was shooting). It was pretty amazing I thought.

I wish I had the desire to work on drills. Maybe I never really loved the game as much as I thought I did. I just wanted to shoot, but never wanted to do drills, so I never surpassed that average B level.

I just think that a player could have all the natural ability in the world, but not enough care inside them to do anything with that natural ability (like doing drills, that are needed to actually get better, and surpass a certain level). I understand the need for a really good instructor too, and from the very beginning is the best time to get one.

 

[tonythetiger583]

Have you even known someone who was able to run a rack within a very short time of ever picking up a cue (like within a month's time)? I would call that a pretty strong natural ability for the game. On the other hand, a player that played every day, but was unable to run a rack until after playing for a year for example, probably had very close to zero natural ability.

I was the second guy...practiced every day for a year until I got my first ero. Got my second one immediately after that...then nothing for a whole other year. Now it's 5-13 a night in practice or 2-3 a night in league. Still a long ways to go.

I think if you have no natural talent for the game, you need to be willing to try anything and everything and evaluate critically if it's something that will help your game if you learn it.

I always found that "do what is comfortable" to be terrible advice. For me, what was comfortable was terrible. So you gotta learn to be constantly uncomfortable while you give something an honest try. And you got to be willing to let go of stuff even if you spent a while learning it. And revisiting old ideas that may not have worked before.

I'd keep a list of things good players would tell me, and even if it didn't make sense at the moment, i'd read it in a couple of months and go "aha".

I think if you suck, you have to constantly go back to the drawing board in the beginning, and each time you start over, it's a little faster and a little easier cause you're a little wiser than before.


side note: I think if you do all the Tor Lowry stuff over and over, that'd be enough to make you a strong player. Not the banking or kicking though, I'm sick of showing the video's to beginnners, and two days later they're excited that they can kick 3 rails, but they can't even stop the ball.

 

[sixpack]

There was a guy in college that started playing and had zero ability. It also seemed like he had zero natural talent. He loved it though and would gamble with everyone for $5/game etc...and he lost a lot.

But he was a very smart guy - Engineering Physics Major - and he practiced constantly. He loved the pursuit of practice. He would hit shots different ways and observe how the balls reacted. He worked tirelessly on his stroke and stance and aim. He was always doing weird things. Weird to the rest of us.

This was before the internet to speak of. It was difficult to find good material on pool and we were all broke college students so didn't have money for books or DVDs really.

Anyway, within about a year he got really, really good. He would have won our ACU-I regional but he got screwed out of it and didn't get to attend nationals.

It was a weird tournament run by Jack White where he decided to do a 100 player round robin. Yep, everybody had to play every other player in the tournament. It was crazy. We did nothing but play pool for the whole ACU-I event. After 30 hours or so of playing straight through the last day to try and finish the tournament in time he's tied with two other players having only lost 3 matches. So they play a ring game first player to win two games in a row wins. He lost.

The rub? Two of his losses were to top players from a Denver school who got fed up with the tournament format and withdrew halfway through. They had both played him and and then forfeited to the two players he was tied with. We argued that they should wipe out all of the matches those players played since they impacted the overall score but Jack didn't want to do that. So he ended up losing playing a 1-game winner stay on tie breaker to a tournament that he clearly won. The guy who won the tournament - two of his losses were to me and this guy - won Nationals that year. I'm pretty sure my teammate would have won if he had gone in his place.

Long story short, I hadn't seen him in a while and he showed up at a tournament saying he hadn't played in years. Still played great though and I played him in the finals. I beat him using a shot that he had showed me years before.

The bottom line though is when he started, everybody thought he had no talent. He just worked harder and smarter than everyone else at getting better and he got better. Way better.

 

[Masayoshi]

Anybody without any major physical handicaps has enough talent to reach at least B level, probably A. I can play around B speed with my left hand and my left hand is DEFINITELY less coordinated than your dominant hand. I also have poor vision.

Mental blocks on talent are another story. If a player doesn't have the intelligence to identify and fix what needs to be fixed, doesn't have the work ethic to practice what needs to be practiced, or has too much ego to seek knowledge from others. He may be a perpetual C player in the making.

 

[wahcheck]

Yes, but "good" is relative

I remember a player who used to practice almost obsessively every day for hours like a monk in a monastery. He got to what I would call high "B" status or low "A" in my estimation. I had a friend I met playing pool who had what I consider natural talent. He was one of those guys who was good with hand/eye coordination at different sports. He hardly ever practiced, (at least from what I saw) but just showed up to play most times, getting into stroke as he went along.
One day, I was practicing alongside the "monastery monk" at another table, and my friend walked in. After chatting with me a while, he got into a small cash game with the "monk". They started out shooting pretty evenly well, but after a while, my friend just ran away with the match, while the monk's game seemed to deteriorate. I was amazed with my friend's ability to shoot the guy down, especially since the table they played on had very tight pockets. I will always believe that natural talent can trump however many hours of practice a less-talented opponent does. That might lead back to the old debate about talent v.s. practice, but I digress. I believe the best player in any sport is the one with natural talent who works and practices religiously.

 

[justinb386]

There was a guy in college that started playing and had zero ability. It also seemed like he had zero natural talent. He loved it though and would gamble with everyone for $5/game etc...and he lost a lot.

But he was a very smart guy - Engineering Physics Major - and he practiced constantly. He loved the pursuit of practice. He would hit shots different ways and observe how the balls reacted. He worked tirelessly on his stroke and stance and aim. He was always doing weird things. Weird to the rest of us.

This was before the internet to speak of. It was difficult to find good material on pool and we were all broke college students so didn't have money for books or DVDs really.

Anyway, within about a year he got really, really good. He would have won our ACU-I regional but he got screwed out of it and didn't get to attend nationals.

It was a weird tournament run by Jack White where he decided to do a 100 player round robin. Yep, everybody had to play every other player in the tournament. It was crazy. We did nothing but play pool for the whole ACU-I event. After 30 hours or so of playing straight through the last day to try and finish the tournament in time he's tied with two other players having only lost 3 matches. So they play a ring game first player to win two games in a row wins. He lost.

The rub? Two of his losses were to top players from a Denver school who got fed up with the tournament format and withdrew halfway through. They had both played him and and then forfeited to the two players he was tied with. We argued that they should wipe out all of the matches those players played since they impacted the overall score but Jack didn't want to do that. So he ended up losing playing a 1-game winner stay on tie breaker to a tournament that he clearly won. The guy who won the tournament - two of his losses were to me and this guy - won Nationals that year. I'm pretty sure my teammate would have won if he had gone in his place.

Long story short, I hadn't seen him in a while and he showed up at a tournament saying he hadn't played in years. Still played great though and I played him in the finals. I beat him using a shot that he had showed me years before.

The bottom line though is when he started, everybody thought he had no talent. He just worked harder and smarter than everyone else at getting better and he got better. Way better.

That was a great story. Very cool.

 

[jsp]

Anybody without any major physical handicaps has enough talent to reach at least B level, probably A. I can play around B speed with my left hand and my left hand is DEFINITELY less coordinated than your dominant hand.

I definitely disagree with your first statement. And your personal example is an exception to the rule. I don't have any "major physical handicaps" with my left hand/arm but I can't play a lick left-handed. And I know that I will never reach B level with my left-hand no matter how much practice I put into it.

Not everyone can reach B level status. Some people are simply uncoordinated.

 

[jsp]

There was a guy in college that started playing and had zero ability. It also seemed like he had zero natural talent. He loved it though and would gamble with everyone for $5/game etc...and he lost a lot.

But he was a very smart guy - Engineering Physics Major...

While reading your post I was waiting for the punchline, "...and that player was me!" I was actually surprised at the end when you made it clear you weren't referring to yourself. Lol.

 

[sixpack]

While reading your post I was waiting for the punchline, "...and that player was me!" I was actually surprised at the end when you made it clear you weren't referring to yourself. Lol.

It did seem to be going there didn't it? I realized that when I was writing it but didn't want to go back and change it. I almost gave in to it in fact.

He went from being way worse than I was to way better than I was in about a year. From a complete noob to a solid A player.

That got my attention and I watched how he practiced and he helped me understand a lot about throw and deflection and even just table patterns.

But just take a moment and think about what he did at that tournament. It was a round robin tournament with 80-120 players. Meaning every player had to play a race to 2 8-ball against *every* other player. And he went something like 96-3! And there were a lot of really good players in there.

 

[one stroke]

The late Tony Ellin. I remember reading an interview where he said most players have a lot more natural talent for the game than he'll ever have. So he had to consistently be working on his game in order to compete with those guys.

The Buddy Hall dream may've been in Rags to Rifleman. Been a long while since I read it.

But I've seen newbies pick up the game in their 50's and within a year be very competitive with B level players.

Ya and then u have guys like a couple taking lessons at one of the places I play , who have been hitting the same shots for a couple yrs and still struggle to make them consistently,, got to hand it to them I'd have sawed my arm off by now

1

 

[9andout]

Freddie the Beard said in his book that he was no natural at all.
He practiced and matched up a lot, to up his game.

 

[michael4]

I will always believe that natural talent can trump however many hours of practice a less-talented opponent does. That might lead back to the old debate about talent v.s. practice, but I digress. I believe the best player in any sport is the one with natural talent who works and practices religiously.

I partially agree.
1) best players will always be the ones with natural talent and a fierce work ethic, (think michael jordon kobe bryant)

2) the second best players will be the ones with the best work ethic, but limited natural talent (think larry bird)

3) the lessor players will be the ones with natural talent, but no work ethic (too many examples to mention)