Cue tip contact time
- Thread starter Straightpool_99
- Start date
He never says what benefit is supposed to come from hitting the ball with “good timing”.
pj
chgo
I must’ve missed the explaining part. Far as I can tell it’s just a couple of unsubstantiated claims: (1) you can increase tip contact time (very slightly and with an unexplained technique) and (2) that’s good (for some unexplained reason).
pj
chgo
Alex Lely uses the word timing sometimes in his commentary, perhaps you can check out some of the matchroom sports matches for examples of the effects good timing is supposed to have, etc. (basically where your touch must be spot on). Unfortunately, for the life of me I can't remember offhand what those matches are but if i do i will post links.
A forum may not be the best place to discuss something that is essentially 'feel' but if I were to try to allude to it, it would be: If we hit a shot good (the right amount of power, acceleration, spin etc), we can tell immediately the moment the cue ball leaves the tip, just from the feedback. That's when we say we got the 'timing' right.
Thank you Straightpool_99
Goes to prove what we have been teaching for 40 years.
For me it all started with "The Jacksonville Experience"
1/1000 of a second. Make the Stroke, everything else is secondary!
randyg
do
But what specifically do we want from good timing that we don't get by simply hitting the CB on the right spot at the right angle and speed? Or is that all that good timing is?
Regarding the main claim in the video, I'm skeptical that "good timing" can increase tip/ball contact time - or that it would necessarily be a good thing to achieve.
I don't think we do developing players a service by telling them they need to develop a skill that we can't describe.
pj
chgo
So "good timing" feels good and produces homeruns instead of foul balls.
But what specifically do we want from good timing that we don't get by simply hitting the CB on the right spot at the right angle and speed? Or is that all that good timing is?
Regarding the main claim in the video, I'm skeptical that "good timing" can increase tip/ball contact time - or that it would necessarily be a good thing to achieve.
I don't think we do developing players a service by telling them they need to develop a skill that we can't describe.
pj
chgo
Do you play any other games/sports? The pool stroke, golf swing, throwing a dart, shooting baskets are all a chain of events that to be accurate/efficient must take place in correct order/time. I'll agree its kinda hard to quantify/explain but its obvious when you do or don't time it right. I guess "sequencing" might be a better term but its the same thing.
I don't see how "timing" has anything to do with accuracy, and I don't know what efficiency means in this context. It sounds to me like "good timing" just means hitting at the right speed.
But I'm willing to learn if anybody can describe it in more concrete terms. If we can't tell a developing player how to get good timing, can we at least say what results to look for - or even what "bad timing" looks like? "You know it when you feel it" doesn't seem very helpful.
pj
chgo
He’s putting out an interesting theory: That when the player feels like they hit it well, the tip-ball contact time is a little longer, specifically 2/10000ths of a sec. longer. But he says he’ll REALLY prove it later.
In the sample videos it does look like there are some cases where the contact time is a little longer. I noticed that none of the examples were center ball. They were all high or low. On the low shots with shorter contact time, it looked like the tip bounced off the bottom half of the ball quicker than the shots with longer contact time. Could the tip “grab” the ball a little better on some shots? Maybe there was some chalk on the tip right there, or the tip had a little better surface area?
In the sample videos it does look like there are some cases where the contact time is a little longer. I noticed that none of the examples were center ball. They were all high or low. On the low shots with shorter contact time, it looked like the tip bounced off the bottom half of the ball quicker than the shots with longer contact time. Could the tip “grab” the ball a little better on some shots? Maybe there was some chalk on the tip right there, or the tip had a little better surface area?
I think Jacksonville's superslomo videos showed that contact time can increase 100% from hitting centerball to maximum spin, so this 20% increase is well within the margin of stroke error. Maybe "feels like they hit it well" just means they hit it farther from center than their average effort and got more spin.
pj
chgo
Sadly Stark is interpreting the data in a way that confirms his particular viewpoint. In fact the timing increases when you hit farther from center because the cue stick does not slow down as much and the cue ball does not move away as fast as with a direct shot. I think the difference between a center-ball hit and an extreme spin shot is about 2:1 in contact time.
I suspect that what Holt felt was a more off-center hit -- he was playing screw shots and the farther from center the better the screw, up to a miscue.
It is unfortunate that Stark does not have a competent physicist that he trusts that he could talk to. It is unfortunate that Stark has not looked at what other people have discovered and said about pool physics. I'm reminded of a billiard physics book written in Great Britain in the early 1900s (Hemming, "Billiards Mathematically Treated"). The author seems to be completely unaware of Coriolis's landmark work of 1835.
I think Stark has some very good points in his instruction. He should stay away from speaking about the physics until he understands it.
... or that part of the tip had a slightly different hardness than other parts, or the shot speed was slightly different, or the acceleration into the ball (which is what probably best describes what most people mean by “timing”) was a little different. Many things can have small effects on the tiny amount of tip contact time, but I don’t think these slight changes are of any practical importance.
Regards,
Dave
Snopes probably has the complete scoop on this, but the basic problem is that the water in the basin/tub must be absolutely still to have any hope of seeing the Coriolis effect on the direction of drainage. It is not practical to prepare such a tub.Sorry for the semi-hijack here BUT, is it true that water going down a drain spins the opposite direction south of the equator?? All this physics talk made me think of this.
Edit: Here's the Snopes stuff: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coriolis-effect/
(That's the same Coriolis who wrote the book on billiard physics.)
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Great article. Sounds like a law firm," Coriolis&Snopes... We know how to spin things"
Is there a practical difference between "shot speed" and "acceleration into the ball"? Doesn't one just produce the other? And so "timing" is just getting the speed right?
pj
chgo
lolGreat article. Sounds like a law firm," Coriolis&Snopes... We know how to spin things"
pj <- not bad
chgo