I suggested shortening up which I think you will find helps but it just occurred to me to ask a very basic question. Are you warming up at all before starting play? Try the old thing of hitting the cue ball across the table and back to the tip, and length of table and back to the tip. Now use those same shots to calibrate speed. Try to hit the rail and then go from back to the tip to a diamond short, then two diamonds short and so on the long way. Try the three rail shot normally used to check if a table is playing long or short. Can you stop the cue ball near the jaws of the pocket, then shorter and shorter, using the diamonds on the rails and calibrating the distance you are trying to shoot with known shots? Can you lag within six inches of the rail consistently? Practicing lags for ten minutes trying for within two inches of the rail is a good exercise too. Gonna have to grind a little.
If you can't make the speed of shots work with known distance shots you aren't going to be able to make speed work with the constantly changing distances of regular play. A plus on coin-op, the cue ball is usually free.
A quick story. I was going to play my first barbox tourney in many years. I spent an hour carefully calibrating my stroke to cue ball action. My game wasn't what it once was and I spent most of that hour adjusting to the Valley rails and cue ball to get spot shape since I had been exclusively a Diamond big track player for the few years since I came back to pool. Right before the tourney they swapped cue balls! Pretty common now but I didn't know that. So much for my last hour's work. Lots of people and few tables, I couldn't even spend a few minutes checking how this new cue ball played. I wasn't expecting to cash in this fairly big event so I just said the hell with it and rolled. Didn't do well!
Just some thoughts. Got to get the cue ball under control before working with how it plays off of other balls. One old time task master gave his students just the cue ball for a month. Then he gave them two balls, slowly adding balls as their skill increased. Sounds like a good way to learn not that most of us would have the patience to do it, including me!(grin) Just had a thought, this would be great to do learning three cushion or other pocketless billiard games.
Hu
