Am I seeing the ball where it is or somewhere else?

CaptainJR

CaptainJR

Shiver me timbers.
Silver Member
OK, so I'm getting old. I went and had an eye exam and they said I needed glasses. Not just reading glass, but glasses for distance as well. So I got them. They suggested bifocals and I said no to that. I have reading glasses if I need them.

So I'm sitting out in the gazebo having a smoke thinking about something or other and glanced up. One of the gazebo posts across from me looked funny. The part that was above my glasses was what appeared to be an inch or a little more than that to the left of the part of it that I saw through the glasses. My first thought was, 'I'm glad I'm not using these to shoot pool with'.

I'm curious at this so I start studying this. If I turned my head a little one way or the other the amount of this deviation increased or decreased. If I turned my head to the right, it went way off even more. If I turned my head to the left a little bit, they lined up. If I turned my head a little more than that to the left, then it looked separated in the opposite direction.

Then I started wondering about that first thought that I had above "I'm glad I'm not using these to shoot pool with". What if the position I'm seeing with the glasses is the correct one and when I'm looking at a ball without the glasses I'm not seeing it where it really is? Or maybe it is somewhere in-between the two.

Just what I needed. Something to give me more confidence. I've always been aware of the dominate eye thing, but this, sheesh.
 
Welcome to the real world of glasses. I've been wearing them since I was 12, long time ago.

You just need to get used to them.

As for the distortions you mention, they can throw your game off, obviously.

What I have noticed though is this: When standing upright, the relationships of the balls to the pockets, to your cue stick, and line of aim, and so on, are usually pretty good. Now, if you line up a perfectly straight in shot, with the object ball in the middle of the table, and the cue ball in the jaws of a corner pocket (the nightmare shot, right?) and it looks straight to you when standing up, as you get down over the shot, something unsettling may happen to what you see is the shot. It may happen to you (it does to me) that the shot no longer appears to be a straight in shot, but a cut shot. Uh ohhhhh.... So you need to convince yourself that the shot is still straight in, and commit to the shot while standing up, make the transition to getting down on the shot slowly, and never take your eye off the object ball as you do so. You'll need to learn how to do this and learn to trust your original sighting of the shot.

By the way, cut shots are even worse.

Good luck with this, it's very doable.

Flex
 
CaptainJR said:
OK, so I'm getting old. I went and had an eye exam and they said I needed glasses. Not just reading glass, but glasses for distance as well. So I got them. They suggested bifocals and I said no to that. I have reading glasses if I need them.

So I'm sitting out in the gazebo having a smoke thinking about something or other and glanced up. One of the gazebo posts across from me looked funny. The part that was above my glasses was what appeared to be an inch or a little more than that to the left of the part of it that I saw through the glasses. My first thought was, 'I'm glad I'm not using these to shoot pool with'.

I'm curious at this so I start studying this. If I turned my head a little one way or the other the amount of this deviation increased or decreased. If I turned my head to the right, it went way off even more. If I turned my head to the left a little bit, they lined up. If I turned my head a little more than that to the left, then it looked separated in the opposite direction.

Then I started wondering about that first thought that I had above "I'm glad I'm not using these to shoot pool with". What if the position I'm seeing with the glasses is the correct one and when I'm looking at a ball without the glasses I'm not seeing it where it really is? Or maybe it is somewhere in-between the two.

Just what I needed. Something to give me more confidence. I've always been aware of the dominate eye thing, but this, sheesh.
Click to expand...


Cappy,

I've worn glasses for a long time and like Flex said, it's a handicap.

You have to be very consistant with your head position and how you view the shot. Otherwise, you will distort the view of the balls. If you watch a good player, Karen Coor and Grady Mathews comes to mind, they all are very consistant with where the head is lined up in relation to the CB. One tip that comes to mind; on long shots or jacked up shots, try not to look thru the top of the lens. You have to force your head back a little to try to look thru the middle of the lens(or close to it).


Eric
 
Flex said:
...commit to the shot while standing up, make the transition to getting down on the shot slowly, and never take your eye off the object ball as you do so. You'll need to learn how to do this and learn to trust your original sighting of the shot.
Flex
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I have had to do. The only thing I also try to do is as I transition down, I try to maintain as much of a periphial awareness as possible, without losing focus on the contact point. I'm not an instructor, but it seems that this would help anyone with accuracy problems whether they had glasses or not. I just started making a concious effort to do this after I got the glasses and a good friend commented that my preshot routine was more solid. Who knew?

I just got my first set of glasses a few months ago and, like you Capt, they originally recommended bifocals. Didn't do it either. The first set was so weird I for me I had to go back and have the lenses changed. Got it right the second time. However, since I've been wearing glasses, my accuracy has been a lot better. In fact, I was going to take the summer off, but since I got the glasses and can see and play better, it really picked up my attitude about the game, and I have been on a playing binge that I hope never ends.

By the way, I'm still cracking up about your post on why women can't play as well as men. I highly recommend folks to look that one up. :D :D
 
I don't wear them an I hope that I'll never have to. But, in the event that I may one day, and more directly for the Capt. what about contacts.

Black Cat :cool:
 
Captain,

You will probably adjust to your glasses more in a few weeks, but for pool, contacts are a lot better. There is no distortion with contacts. My experience with glasses was they made you use an unnatural head position - I didn't like it one bit.

Chris

Ps. I had Lasik 6 years ago and it is the best.
 
Although I appreciate all the replies, TATE is the closest answer to what I was getting at.

I'm not wearing the glasses to play pool yet. I can still see pretty good at that close a distance.

TATE
How do you know there is no displacement of objects when you are wearing the contacts. The only way I can tell when I'm wearing the glasses is if I look at the edge of the glasses and am looking at something that is half in the glasses and half out. So if you have contacts I don't think you could tell if you had displacement. Thus what I'm asking is. Could you have slight displacement in your real eyes and not know it?

Remember we are talking displacement left of right, not blurriness or distortion.

My curiosity is - could the lens in our real eyes (don't remember what that is medically called) be displacing objects a little bit. We would never know it because it wouldn't be insignificant, but it could make us miss pool shots without us realizing it.

Could this be why some people that don't even wear glasses can't make a ball even when shown how. If they were not seeing a ball where it really was (remember I'm not talking about a lot here, just off a little) it would be difficult to coordinate your hands pointing the stick in the right direction.

Is there an eye test that could check this?
 
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