Buddy Hall - Practice Question

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DrCue'sProtege

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I believe I read awhile back that years ago, down around Shreveport, Buddy Hall practiced one shot all day long at a pool hall. One shot. The same shot. All day long. For hours and hours.

Thoughts on this posters?

There are thousands of shots that are possible on a pool table. Unless it was a fairly routine shot it could have been a shot he would rarely see. However, this does sound like it could be somewhat helpful. As soon as I get over this winter time illness I might start a routine like this.

r/DCP
 
DrCue'sProtege said:
I believe I read awhile back that years ago, down around Shreveport, Buddy Hall practiced one shot all day long at a pool hall. One shot. The same shot. All day long. For hours and hours.

Thoughts on this posters?

There are thousands of shots that are possible on a pool table. Unless it was a fairly routine shot it could have been a shot he would rarely see. However, this does sound like it could be somewhat helpful. As soon as I get over this winter time illness I might start a routine like this.

r/DCP
Click to expand...
I don't know about said practice session but in the old days it would have made a lot of sense to practice spot shots. They were a decider in a lot of games, even things like 8B and 9B. Most games used to spot illegally made balls, so having that shot down would be strong.
 
Wow, that's 50 years ago. The only strong player I ever knew that focused on a single shot in their practice would shoot long, straight shots over and over. He claimed that no shot exposed flaws in one's stroke than the long, straight shot.

No idea what Buddy's practice shot was.
 
DrCue'sProtege said:
I believe I read awhile back that years ago, down around Shreveport, Buddy Hall practiced one shot all day long at a pool hall. One shot. The same shot. All day long. For hours and hours.

Thoughts on this posters?

There are thousands of shots that are possible on a pool table. Unless it was a fairly routine shot it could have been a shot he would rarely see. However, this does sound like it could be somewhat helpful. As soon as I get over this winter time illness I might start a routine like this.

r/DCP
Click to expand...
If that is the case, it could be something he dogged at a critical time. That would be very understandable.

Practice/warmup for me, I do have a specific shot that I shot more then others just to help get dialed in. There have been times where I have dogged a shot when it mattered and next time I hit the table to practice, that shot got at least an hour worth of troubleshooting.

Whenever I focused on a particular shot I would shoot it 100 times (at least) and do it in groups of 10 and record my results. After the 100 shots you should have a semi-reliable percentage of how much you are successful and you can also see if you got better at it.
 
I was around Buddy quite a bit late '78-'79 on. He did not have any set routines of any kind. He liked to practice on the snooker table for a while then look for a game. He'd MUCH rather play someone giving up a decent spot over hitting balls. I don't know what he did early on but by the time i met him his practice was just warm up/maintenance. He'd rather play then practice i know that for sure.
 
sjm said:
Wow, that's 50 years ago. The only strong player I ever knew that focused on a single shot in their practice would shoot long, straight shots over and over. He claimed that no shot exposed flaws in one's stroke than the long, straight shot.

No idea what Buddy's practice shot was.
Click to expand...
He didn't have a 'practice shot', i didn't know any good players that had a specific shot they'd practice. You might work on a shot you missed/dogged in your last match. People that ask this stuff really haven't spent any time around really good players. The OP still thinks its the table's fault he can't run out. Please.
 
boogieman said:
I don't know about said practice session but in the old days it would have made a lot of sense to practice spot shots. They were a decider in a lot of games, even things like 8B and 9B. Most games used to spot illegally made balls, so having that shot down would be strong.
Click to expand...
And there were many spot shots, depending on where you wanted to leave the cue ball.

I think it's entirely possible that Buddy spent an hour or even hours working on one shot or a family of shots when he was learning to play. SVB and Dennis Orcullo are both known to practice the break for hours, and I suspect a lot of the top players invested a lot of time on the current WNT break requirements. I watched SVB practice a single rail-first shot for an hour (and I spotted the ball for him for part of that). Raymond Ceulemans has remarked that he drove his friends and family to distraction by shooting the same shot over and over until he was satisfied he understood it.
 
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