Bridge Placement

Andrew Manning

Andrew Manning

Aspiring know-it-all
Silver Member
I've been thinking about something very fundamental to shooting good pool. So consider the following facts, which I claim are axioms of pools (inarguable truths):

1) Playing good pool requires good cue ball control.
2) Good cue ball control requires hitting the object ball very accurately, because a slightly thin or thick hit changes the speed and angle that the CB takes on after contact very significantly.
3) Good CB control requires accurate tip placement, since tip placement produces spin (or lack thereof) and spin is central to CB control.
4) Two points define a line.
5) Your bridge and your tip are two points that defining the line of your cue.

So the way I see it, these facts fit together to say where you place your bridge hand, down to the millimeter, is incredibly important to your game. If tip placement is dictated by what you want to do with the CB, and the line of your cue is dictated by the accurate hit you need on the OB, then we can't change those two variables without jeopardizing the results of the shot. And if two points define a line, then we have to have perfect bridge hand placement in order for the bridge hand and the correct tip placement to define the correct line of the cue.

So how come nobody ever seems to talk about bridge hand placement technique? When accuracy is discussed, it seems like instructors, players, and windbags alike focus on the right arm, and not the left hand (assuming a right-handed shooter). But by my way of thinking, once the left hand is in place, the only thing the right arm can do to correct the line of the cue is to produce an incorrect tip placement. In CB-control terms, to me that translates to "if your left hand's not perfectly placed, you're already screwed".

Any thoughts? Have any of you ever spent any effort trying to perfect your left hand placement? Anyone got any good bridge placement techniques? Anyone think I'm just really dumb or really boring or both? I just thought I'd start a thread to discuss this, because it doesn't seem like it's ever discussed when people talk about accuracy, and to my way of thinking the bridge placement is as important as the stroke!

-Andrew
 
Andrew Manning said:
I've been thinking about something very fundamental to shooting good pool. So consider the following facts, which I claim are axioms of pools (inarguable truths):

1) Playing good pool requires good cue ball control.
2) Good cue ball control requires hitting the object ball very accurately, because a slightly thin or thick hit changes the speed and angle that the CB takes on after contact very significantly.
3) Good CB control requires accurate tip placement, since tip placement produces spin (or lack thereof) and spin is central to CB control.
4) Two points define a line.
5) Your bridge and your tip are two points that defining the line of your cue.

So the way I see it, these facts fit together to say where you place your bridge hand, down to the millimeter, is incredibly important to your game. If tip placement is dictated by what you want to do with the CB, and the line of your cue is dictated by the accurate hit you need on the OB, then we can't change those two variables without jeopardizing the results of the shot. And if two points define a line, then we have to have perfect bridge hand placement in order for the bridge hand and the correct tip placement to define the correct line of the cue.

So how come nobody ever seems to talk about bridge hand placement technique? When accuracy is discussed, it seems like instructors, players, and windbags alike focus on the right arm, and not the left hand (assuming a right-handed shooter). But by my way of thinking, once the left hand is in place, the only thing the right arm can do to correct the line of the cue is to produce an incorrect tip placement. In CB-control terms, to me that translates to "if your left hand's not perfectly placed, you're already screwed".

Any thoughts? Have any of you ever spent any effort trying to perfect your left hand placement? Anyone got any good bridge placement techniques? Anyone think I'm just really dumb or really boring or both? I just thought I'd start a thread to discuss this, because it doesn't seem like it's ever discussed when people talk about accuracy, and to my way of thinking the bridge placement is as important as the stroke!

-Andrew
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if "Perfect" bridge hand placement is necessary for great pool but i would say good and stable is very important.
 
Bridge hand placement is one of several alignments that contribute to a players ability to deliver the cue along the intended line of aim in a repeatable fashion.
Before setting for a shot, my aim is visually determined prior to placing my hand on the table. My stance, shoulder position, wrist plane, etc. are now a grooved and proven collection of fundamentals that allow me to position and deliver over the line of aim without much conscious thought.
Well formed hand bridges always creates a firm, straight edge against which the cue slides along its line of aim / delivery. Their placement / position on the table eventually becomes fundamental.
 
teambizy said:
I'm not sure if "Perfect" bridge hand placement is necessary for great pool but i would say good and stable is very important.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you read my entire post. How can you have perfect tip placement and perfect aim without a perfectly placed bridge? How can you get the desired results of a shot without perfect tip placement and perfect aim?

-Andrew
 
Andrew I agree with you 100%. Colin mentioned this not too long ago also. My reasoning for accurate bridge hand placement is slightly different than your's and Colin's. I'm glad you guys brought this to light, because the combination of my reasoning and yours could very well fix alot of people's games who have crooked strokes or just flat out miss alot of balls.

My reasoning behind accurate bridge placement, first and foremost, is in relation to your shooting arm. Your shoulder is a ball hinge. Your elbow cannot move side to side, swoop in or out, without the shoulder. Your elbow, however, is a fixed hinge. You can only swing your forearm straight back and forth. Now, once you get down in your stance, your right elbow (for a righty) should be fixed in place as you take your practice strokes.

This leads me to the next part. If your elbow is a fixed hinge, and you have no shoulder movement, then how come you can still have a crooked stroke? How come you have to twist your wrist inwards or outwards on the forward-delivery of the cue alot of times?

The reason for this is because your bridge hand is not in line with your elbow, which I say again, is a fixed hinge. When you get down on a shot, lets say you overshoot your bridge hand, past the line of your fixed-hinge (elbow) by an inch. When you try to take your practice strokes, you will wonder why your cuetip wants to go to the right, just before you are at the cueball. This will cause you to put right english on the shot. The only way to not do this, is to get your elbow and/or wrist involved in the stroke. You have to twist to keep your cue in line.

Same scenario, but let's say that instead of overshooting your bridge hand to the right of your fixed-hing's path, you undershoot it to the left. When you get down on the shot, your tip is gonna want to go left on your forward stroke. Again, elbow and wrist movement are required to prevent yourself from invariably putting left english on the cueball.

You absoloutely MUST get your bridge hand directly in line with your shooting arm's elbow. That doesn't mean the elbow from any direction. Get down in your stance without the cue, and look at your stroking arm. Take some practice strokes, and find out exactly what line that fixed hinge is on. The bridge must be on that same line to have a consistent, repeatable, and powerful stroke.

Back to your point about bridge placement in relationship to the shot. Lets say you have your cue in line with the line of your stroking elbow's line, if you can accurately put your bridge hand down on the cloth on the line of the shot, over and over again, that's what builds a great shotmaker.

Alot of people get down on the shot, and because of poor bridge placement, they move their elbow to the left or right, to compensate for what their eyes percieve to be on the right line. If you do all that moving and adjusting, you are bound to throw something off, and you won't be consistent that way.

For those of you who don't believe me, take a look at all top pros out there. When they get down on the shot, they don't do any fidgeting. If something isn't right, they get back up and start over. It's the people that don't have the patience to get up and start over, that play the same way for a long time, without getting any better.

After studying the pros, rewinding, pausing, etc. hundreds or thousands of times, these are some of the key elements I've found that most pros share. They don't fidget around with their cuestick, unless they intend to put BHE (which they rarely do). Once they get down, it's a thing of beauty because they are solid as a rock. Now look at your average 'C' player, and you'll see many of them fidgeting with their tip, bridge, even their stances sway from side to side, because all these adjustments they are making is throwing them off balance.

There are soooo many variables in this game when it comes to mechanics, it's impossible to understand them all. That's what's so great about this game. So much to learn, so little time.

Crap this was a long post. Hope this didn't bore anyone to death.
 
You're right, cuetechasaurus, your elbow, being a fixed hinge, will swing your hand on a fixed plane, and if your bridge is not in that plane, you'll get a banana stroke. However, in that case I don't think the bridge placement is what needs fixing, since by my logic the bridge placement has to be exactly the right point in space for the shot to work. What needs fixing in the case you described is the shoulder placement. Moving the shoulders right or left a little bit, while keeping the elbow in place, will change the alignment of your elbow hinge, and thus the plane on which your hand swings. Moving this plane to be coincident with the bridge placement dictated by the shot you're executing will make the "perfect" straight stroke, with perfect tip placement, perfect aim, and perfect pendulum, possible.

-Andrew
 
Andrew...What we instructors try to work with, is your NATURAL bridge length, your natural grip area (provided it's perpendicular at CB address), your natural timing sequence, etc. Everyone is built differently, and everyone has these natural tendencies. With some students, we just adjust things a little...with others, we have to do 'makeovers'. When I see you in a couple of weeks we'll find the answers to all your questions.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
 
Scott Lee said:
Andrew...What we instructors try to work with, is your NATURAL bridge length, your natural grip area (provided it's perpendicular at CB address), your natural timing sequence, etc. Everyone is built differently, and everyone has these natural tendencies. With some students, we just adjust things a little...with others, we have to do 'makeovers'. When I see you in a couple of weeks we'll find the answers to all your questions.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
Click to expand...

Hi Scott, good to hear from you. I wasn't so much talking about bridge length, but rather side-to-side placement of the bridge. What I was getting at is that unless I'm missing something, a very small error to the left or right in where you place your bridge hand should mean that you can't hit the right part of the CB without aiming incorrectly, and you can't aim correctly without hitting the CB elsewhere than intended, because two points, bridge and tip, define your line of aim.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to our lesson. I'm on a plateau that I'm looking to climb away from. I'm hoping I don't need any major "makeovers", but I'm prepared to invest some hard work if I do.

-Andrew
 
I find that doing an air pump and also the finger tip bridge help me get my bridge in the perfect position. Although the finger tip bridge isn't as steady as a normal bridge. The most important thing is to keep your eyes on the shot line and focused on the object ball until your bridge is set.

Bridge length is debatable. Shorter = more accurate cueing. Longer = better aim. So if you find you aren't hitting the right spot on the cueball then you need to go shorter. 10" from the tip to the place it contacts your hand is a good starting point. Take a tape measure and draw a line with a pen so you can tell where 10" is. 10" to me seems like about 3" cause I'm used to having a 12-13" bridge. Your back hand must move back or forward with your front hand to keep at 90*. So once you find your spot then you will put your bridge and back hand in the same spot for every shot.
 
Interesting post. Eberle's book "Zen Pool" places more emphasis on this than I've read in many books. It seems like once a proper bridge is taught in terms of the hand technique (how to form an open bridge, closed bridge, rail bridge, etc.) that's where the advice stops regarding this fundamental.

Recalling a post of Colin's (I think?) he suggested one of the reasons Ronnie O'Sullivan is such a genius on the green felt is due to his superior bridge placement. I think you're both on to something.

Sometimes when I'm 'off' (more often than not) I try and try to correct stance, stroke, etc etc... only to frustrate myself by not figuring out what's wrong. Sometimes it's that my bridge hand isn't correctly aligned, mostly because when I became aware of developing proper technique, I never once thought about bridge hand placement.

One more thing to learn....
 
A pro told me a few weeks ago that he considers the placement of the left hand very important. He said that yes, people always look back at their right arm when something goes wrong. But what they should do is look at their bridge hand. Unfortunately he didn't elaborate as to what goes wrong. We were working on my stroke at the time, so it wasn't really important then.
 
On thing I have noticed some players do as well as some pros in their pre-shot routine is this: They step back away from the shot and put their body in line to the shot. Then they place the tip of the cue on the cloth addressing the cueball, sometimes they even sight down it. After this they come down with their body and bridge placement.

What they believe they are doing is lining up the shot in a nutshell, but they are doing much more than that. They are picking a point for bridge placement as well...

Of course you do not see this for every shot, only for the ones that require precision. Just something to think about. ;)
 
Andrew Manning said:
I'm not sure if you read my entire post. How can you have perfect tip placement and perfect aim without a perfectly placed bridge? How can you get the desired results of a shot without perfect tip placement and perfect aim?

-Andrew
Click to expand...

Hi Andrew;

I think your ideas are good. I respect your knowledge, but the bridge doesn't define the line. Your grip hand defines the line and your bridge is a point along that line. The problem with some of the ideas of others is that everyone seems to be trying to use 2 dimensional terms and ideas to predict behavior that has 3 dimensions.

As the bridge is really only a point along the line, if you consider the horizontal plane, it must be straight and in line so the cue travels on the H. line. However in the verticle plane, the cue will move up and down because of the arm movement and the pivot/fulcrum (sp) point. So your really talking apples and oranges.

You might also consider other causes of better play when the bridge is at a certain length, such as sighting, stroke length. Sort of a chicken & egg thing.
 
andrew you raise a very good point and i understand what you mean. there is one thing i think we've missed though. you can simply move your bridge position slightly by moving/leaning your fingers, rather than moving the whole bridge hand left or right two millimetres. most of the time this is what we do, just twitch/adjust your bridge.
 
Great thread. One thing I work with students on is bridge hand placement. I usually cover it when we are working on visualization. I have them visualize where they will put their bridge, then hold a piece of paper between the shooter and the cue ball, and have then get down on the shot. It can be pretty ugly at first, but with a little practice, you can get very precise with your bridge placement, even when the cue ball is out of sight.
Steve
 
pooltchr said:
Great thread. One thing I work with students on is bridge hand placement. I usually cover it when we are working on visualization. I have them visualize where they will put their bridge, then hold a piece of paper between the shooter and the cue ball, and have then get down on the shot. It can be pretty ugly at first, but with a little practice, you can get very precise with your bridge placement, even when the cue ball is out of sight.
Steve
Click to expand...

Very interesting, I like that little tool you have incorporated in your instruction.
 
Snorks said:
So, what is a natural bridge length for most?
Click to expand...

Snorks...Everyone is different. The one thing that seems to be standard, though, is that everyone underestimates the length of their bridge. I would have to say the average seems to be 10-12 inches...even though they think it is only 6-8!:D Bridge length overall is not a huge factor, provided the cue is gripped properly, and the delivery sequence is smooth.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
 
Andrew Manning said:
I've been thinking about something very fundamental to shooting good pool. So consider the following facts, which I claim are axioms of pools (inarguable truths):

1) Playing good pool requires good cue ball control.
2) Good cue ball control requires hitting the object ball very accurately, because a slightly thin or thick hit changes the speed and angle that the CB takes on after contact very significantly.
3) Good CB control requires accurate tip placement, since tip placement produces spin (or lack thereof) and spin is central to CB control.
4) Two points define a line.
5) Your bridge and your tip are two points that defining the line of your cue.

So the way I see it, these facts fit together to say where you place your bridge hand, down to the millimeter, is incredibly important to your game. If tip placement is dictated by what you want to do with the CB, and the line of your cue is dictated by the accurate hit you need on the OB, then we can't change those two variables without jeopardizing the results of the shot. And if two points define a line, then we have to have perfect bridge hand placement in order for the bridge hand and the correct tip placement to define the correct line of the cue.

So how come nobody ever seems to talk about bridge hand placement technique? When accuracy is discussed, it seems like instructors, players, and windbags alike focus on the right arm, and not the left hand (assuming a right-handed shooter). But by my way of thinking, once the left hand is in place, the only thing the right arm can do to correct the line of the cue is to produce an incorrect tip placement. In CB-control terms, to me that translates to "if your left hand's not perfectly placed, you're already screwed".

Any thoughts? Have any of you ever spent any effort trying to perfect your left hand placement? Anyone got any good bridge placement techniques? Anyone think I'm just really dumb or really boring or both? I just thought I'd start a thread to discuss this, because it doesn't seem like it's ever discussed when people talk about accuracy, and to my way of thinking the bridge placement is as important as the stroke!

-Andrew
Click to expand...
I understand exactly what you are saying and agree totally.

The aim point on the cue ball combined with the side to side location of the bridge define the line of the stroke.

Or another way; the aim point on the cue ball combined with the line of the stroke define the location of the bridge.

Any way you look at it, for any shot, these are the three fundamentals

Watch the great players and how they set their bridge - they all have great technique.

Without perfect bridge placement you cannot get the exact contact point on the cue ball AND the exact line of stroke.
 
When having to stroke hard to get the cue ball to travel farther than normal for shape, it is hard to keep the OB on line. The object ball travels at a greater angle than the one that is aimed or expected.

Is this because of the bridge placement, stroke off line on follow through, squirt, stance, lack of practice - all of the above?
Thanks.
 
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