Oh God...here we go with analogies from outer space again.
I don't know how good you play the guitar, but I have to think you're an excellent dancer.
You do it here every day. The two step...the shuffle...the moon walk...River dance...
the samba...the mamba...the polka...the Minuet...the Waltz...the Charleston...we could go on and on.
But you can't explain what you do in detail to make two balls link up with each other to go in a certain direction to fall into a hole. Amazing!
(Dance on...)
What's even more amazing is that I'm not much of a dancer. :embarrassed2:
You enjoy learning new tricks, working on something until you finally get it working like it's supposed to work.
So I will attempt to explain how we feel players aim...
Step 1: I look at the cb-ob relationship in reference to the pocket.
Step 2: I look at where the ob will go if I shoot the cb straight into it, a full ball hit. On thin or awkward looking cuts I might stand behind the ob and visualize its path to the pocket also.
Step 3: I look to where I know the cb needs to be in order to send the ob to the pocket. I know this location because I've been doing it for many years. At some point throughout those years my brain eventually paved all those synaptic pathways that allow me to just know this information as soon as my eyes capture the image of the shot.
Step 4: I visualize the line the cb needs to travel. This is more like a vertical plane, not a line.
Step 5: I step onto this vertical plane, which usually crosses over the middle of my back foot, and I align my body so that my stroke is locked into this plane, stroking back and forth to ensure everything looks rightvand feels right in accordance with my experience.
Step 6: I stroke through the cb and send it on its way.
Steps 1 thru 4 typically take about 3 to 5 seconds at most. Steps 5 and 6 take another few seconds.
Now, do this several thousand times until you've shot most shots several hundred times successfully. This could take a few years if you only play 2 or 3 hours a week. Eventually you'll get pretty good at it, as long as you pay attention to the commonly missed shots and make some conscious effort here and there to figure out what you might be doing wrong or doing inconsistently.
But there will always be shots that just don't come up often enough to become automatic, unless you incorporate professional practice habits and hit hundreds or thousands of balls every day, which is very unlikely to be the case for most players.
Last edited: