Missing to the left...

It's not bad eyes, it's a bad mind.
Your eyes don't do the shooting, your mind does. Retrain your mind to strike the cue ball at the correct spot that will cause the object ball to go into the pocket.
Set up very short, very easy, straight in shots. Get down on the shot (your set-up should be fundamentally correct at this point), and make the ball.
Now, did the ob go on a straight line to the back of the pocket? It should have. If it didn't, go back and do it again. Look at cue ball as you make the shot. Does it too go towards the back of the pocket. As you pocket balls see each shot in your mind.
If none of this works for you, take a few days off and then quit playing pool altogether.

cbi1000 said:

So here is my issue with missed shots, 90-95% of any shot I miss it's to the left side of the pocket. Doesn't matter if I'm cutting the ball to the left or right or straight in. When I miss its usually to the left. I have been working on different stances and bridges, can't shake it. I'm starting to wonder if it's an eye thing. If one of my eyes is stronger/weaker than the other and if it's changing my perception of the shot.

Any ideas on how I might be able to resolve this?

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When Earl has this problem he adjusts his weights. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

On a regular basis, how many balls can you run in rotation (9 ball) without missing, generally speaking?

Also, how often do you miss making an object ball? In other words, what is your skill level. We have people who can't run 3 balls in rotation on this forum and we have people who seldom ever miss but this is important to know, imo.

If you were making the balls, but pocketing them to the left of the pocket, we could talk about aiming a bit more to the right but until we know about your skill level, some of the answers may not be the ones you need, although most of them are great answers.

JoeyA

prewarhero said:

Are you 100 percent sure you are hitting center ball when you want to? Try the old CB on the spot and hit down table and back and see if you can hit your tip.

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I also agree with the above...

could be you are not hitting the cue ball where you think you are, OR your stroke has a swerve in it.

If you are hitting straight in shots to the left, just work on long straight in shots till you correct the issue, (this should correct the issue on your cut shots too)

Don't stick at it and compensate... That's awful advice. Try different things to narrow down the issue then work on getting the right resolution for the issue.

I have come across this with a few players in my time. All have been left eye dominant and right handed players. The issues varied. Some were sighting the shot wrong. By that I mean finding their line of aim and working the aiming out with their right eye doing too much of the work. The fix was simple.... Get the left eye sighting through centre cue ball along the shot line and push the right eye out of the picture a little. The changes are very minor and you don't need to shift the head too much when standing. The other issue was with the not under their vision centre when down. Although they were left eye dominant the left eye doesn't have to be directly over the cue. Moving the head more to the left in slight increments until they found a position that made the shot look straight (for a straight in shot obviously) and it looked like they were hitting centre ball fixed this. The rest...ie hitting centre ball was down to their stroke. It's worth mentioning that these people tended to hit with left English even though it looked to them that they were hitting centre ball, thus deflecting the cue ball to the right and making the object ball go left. Just check that you aren't hitting with a slight bit of left spin... Hit shots firm with a stripe so you can see just what's going on.

Finally the least common reason I've seen was moving the head off line when getting down. When you lock in the line of aim make the eyes go straight down not across the line of aim. When the eyes cut across you lose the precise lime the cue ball needs to travel. For example... When you place the left foot as a right hander the head naturally wants to go left causing the right eye to come over the shot more or even move to the left side of the line of aim completely causing you to figure out the line of aim from memory and from a distorted angle. This means the head moves in from the left toward the cue ball and thus the cue and both hands move in from the left towards a wrongly perceived centre cue ball which just happens to point to the right a little more than is needed causing to cut more to the left.

Issues like this can get very complicated very quickly. My advice would be to seek instructions if none of the advice offered on here helps. It may not be vision related and I may be way off base so in which case you could be trying to figure this out for a stupidly long time when a good instructor will be able to find the cause in a lesson or two and resolve it over the course of a few lessons and a few weeks.

I used to have a similar missing problem. I'm right handed and my misses went usually to the left of where they should. I had a lesson with Ken Tewksbury, a PBIA instructor who had me line up a diagonal corner to corner shot but not actually stroke it. When I was satisfied with doing the PSR, stepping into the line and getting down to shoot he told me to lay my cue down on the aim line, get up and step back and look at where I aimed. Hell, I was cutting the straight in shot to the left....no wonder I was missing!! My center of vision was way off! I got back down and made a head position adjustment without touching the cue laying on the table and found my vision center.
Now I miss because of a poor stroke, lifting my head or losing focus....but I know where to aim!!
Mitch

cbi1000 said:

So here is my issue with missed shots, 90-95% of any shot I miss it's to the left side of the pocket. Doesn't matter if I'm cutting the ball to the left or right or straight in. When I miss its usually to the left. I have been working on different stances and bridges, can't shake it. I'm starting to wonder if it's an eye thing. If one of my eyes is stronger/weaker than the other and if it's changing my perception of the shot.

Any ideas on how I might be able to resolve this?

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Stance is not accurate, try with CB only from spot to middle of upper short rail, until you get the CB to come back almost 100% straight. Now lock that stance position, grip, and bridge position, also make a note of where your chin at , with all shots

Now try to shoot a spot shot with high top or right medium to hard speed, hope you have a LD shaft, you will make probably 8 our of 10, do not shoot any low tip shots until you are perfect with the high.

Best of luck

Not going into the whole eye thing but we are all wired at birth to have both eyes work together... Each eye has a sweet spot where it does it's job the best and when there are no issues the brain gets a perfect picture of the task at hand from both eyes because they will work together.........

If you have an astigmatism then the eye is not round and as you get older your eyes become less supple so you can no longer auto correct so you lose the ability to trust what you see...

So you see a round object with one eye and a pumkin with the other... The brain will try and process the information together but you will never see the contact correctly because the images don't fit..

if the OP has a stigmatism that is uncorrected he might as well play ostrich and stick his head in the sand or play democrat and stick his head up his own keister... You MIGHT get him to see the ball perfect in a perfect position but you only get that position in practice....

If the problem is consistent even when you know it... yeah it may be your eyes.....

That would be an alignment issue. Observe how you address the ball. Had it years ago then learned 90-90, CTE and other pivot aiming techniques and they are gone now. Pivot aiming helped me get in line.

dgem said:

That would be an alignment issue. Observe how you address the ball. Had it years ago then learned 90-90, CTE and other pivot aiming techniques and they are gone now. Pivot aiming helped me get in line.

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Let's get this straight. Was it a pivot, or a pirouette? It's important.

Tramp Steamer said:

snip...
Anyway, what I do is apply a bit of inside spin to the white ball, but it's not the spin that I'm after. What I want to do is squirt whitey just enough make an even thinner hit on the object ball. Experiment with this concept and see what happens.

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O..M...G.... he's using a touch of inside, matey!

I do something similar, mostly on the thinner cuts, but I doubt if it is enough to cause much squirt using the shaft I have. What that bit of inside does is give me a better aim line when making thin cuts.

For some reason, my eye and aim and cue seem to be drawn back toward the half-ball hit on thin cuts, which is way too thick. That bit of inside adjusts my eye, aim and cue to make the thin cut. How much is a bit of inside? About half a tip off center, using parallel English not backhand English, but try whatever works for you.

My pool buddy is always amazed, he says I can cut the paint off the ball. The inside alignment works even for shots that are not so thin as needing a most severe cut.

I believe the problem comes from my eye preference or dominance. I've been intending to get Gene Albrect's help but haven't done so yet.