Lot of great advice here from Tinman and others. I'll add my own since I was/am in a similar position as the original poster.
I only got back into the game two and half years ago, as I mentioned in a few other posts. Had a table as a kid but went a long time without playing until my own children had grown up.
The first year or so I struggled with consistently locating the cue ball in the right spot or even the right zone. Now? I have gotten much better.
How? The usual. Practice, but not just regular practice. Informed practice.
I've been on an accelerated course the past few years to relearn the game the right way, for one thing. Watched hundreds of hours of pro matches and instructional videos, including Tinman's marathon session with Lil Chris (glutton for punishment, am I).
Here is what I have learned:
First, and most important to me, is master centerball. Or hitting the cue ball on the vertical axis, as another poster said.
The cue ball path is highly predictable with follow and pretty predictable with stun and draw, depending on the speed. Without knowing where the ball will go on centerball hits, you won't be able to easily figure out how spin will change the CB path.
After that, you need to know the right principles of position play. Various posters have mention them:
*Get on the right line of the shot. Hugely important.
*Aim for larger shape zones or windows where you want the cue ball to land.
*Try to come off rails whenever possible - so much easier to land where you want if you don't have to float into an area. When you try this, it is important to pick a spot on the rail that you want the CB to hit.
*Use the 30 degree rule, the sliding cue ball (tangent) line and, if drawing, the three times the angle rule to visual where the cue ball will go on every shot after contact. I try to pay attention the CB path after every shot now, something I never did before. Much thanks to both DrDave and Tor Lowry for emphasizing these points. Before each shot, I think about the follow and stun trajectories as a baseline.
*Look several balls ahead and so forth.
Nothing new, of course.
What have I found? It's actually fairly easy to put the cue ball in a tight window if you are using follow or the cue ball is near the object ball.
It gets harder to be as precise the more distance there is or if you have to use multiple rails. That's why coming into the line of the shot is so critical.
To get to this point, I had to do a lot of drills, but not just any drills. I use a lot of Tor Lowry drills. Started with centerball. Now I do three-ball patterns, four-ball patterns, five ball patterns. I repeat them over and over again until I can do them five times in a row.
I also do my own random pattern drills. For example, every day starting a few months ago I would throw three balls on the table. I'd have to pick the pocket where each ball would go and where I would want the CB to end up generally.
After I was able to do 10 threeball drills in a row successfully, I moved to four balls. Then five balls. Now I am up to six balls.
Fewer balls on the table allows you to focus more on getting the cue ball where you want it to go.
Recently I bought an program and app on which DrDave collaborated called Bullseye Billiard. The app forces you to play pinpoint position on 200 different shots.
Guess what? I am hitting very specific windows when I do these drills. And it's helped my game a lot already in just a few weeks. Not only that, but doing these shots over and over (at least 20 times successfully) teaches you a lot about the likely path of the cueball. Muscle
and brain memory.
Now, you don't need to buy a program or anything. There is a lot of free stuff out there. (I do recommend anything from Tor Lowry, though)
You can do it. I
am doing it. But it takes practice with a purpose.
Good luck with your game, as a certain poster here would say.
