If all of the games I have played had a subjective skill index, and as bad as I am in pool, I am still "relatively"closer to a pro pool player than, say a pro ping pong player, pro golfer, pro anything .
Here's something that helped me yrs ago. A couple of seconds before shooting, start slowly rotating the cue in your stroke hand and continue on thru the stroke. I remember being surprised that it helped.
Half way down there's the same circle of chalk that you see on bar cues, house cues and resulting from chalk with a deep hole. That says to me that Earl isn't that demanding about "painting"on a perfectly chalked tip. That really stuck in my mind .