A textured rubber grip lets you keep your hand as open as possible with little more than your fingertips on the cue allowing your wrist to hinge forward a little more. When you can get the cue as far away from your palm as possible, you increase the mechanical advantage of your elbow and wrist, generating more cue speed with a compact stroke. I used to play almost exclusively with wrapless cues and switching to a rubber grip I found I could open my grip up very wide without having the cue slip one bit even on power shots. Look an Niels Feiijen, he grips his cue so loosely you could fit another cue in the gap in his hand, which is why he is so accurate when he juices a ball, he snaps through cleanly and doesn't have to take a big windup so very little can go wrong. Compare that to goofy Earl with his taped up cue, arm weights, golf glove... his new thing is a weight belt around his waist to stop him from moving because for whatever reason he refuses to stop slumping his shoulders and head.
To achieve accurate power shots, you either open up your grip to make your elbow/wrist hinge most efficiently (Feijen), bridge longer with a bigger backswing (SVB, Reyes),or you grip more firmly adding the cue's effective mass (Hohmann, O'Sullivan).
As I don't make my money from pool, I don't hit balls 4-8 hours every day, so I adopted the technique that is most dependable when coming to the table cold. Keeping my grip open so my wrist always hinges on the same line as my elbow forces a good elbow alignment and stance so I'll notice right away if something is wrong. The rubber grip itself doesn't give me more power, it lets me keep grip lighter I can hinge my elbow and wrist effectively, so no matter the shot speed I don't need to warm my arm up for an hour to make sure I don't swing wild and pull a shot off-line.
I didn't know you where a zen-yoda poolmaster!
You still got just about everything wrong.
What you mean to say is that you prefer the FEEL of a rubber grip...
That's totally cool, we are all different, but as far as physics go, you are way off.
I agree with you, watching Niels play is a thing of beauty, but why do you slam Earl like that?
Earls stroke is pretty amazing, I love that long, gutsy stroke, no poking the balls there.
As far as what he is wearing, it is his choice, som of it is a mental thing ( like your focus on your cue weight) but the idea of adding weights, in order to be more still while shooting is something they have done in target shooting for decades, and that makes sense from a physics standpoint.
I have no idea how long you've been playing or what level you are at, but to me, you sound like a novice, who just have experienced some major progress (running your first rack of 10 ball?)
And now your looking for your next "fix" thinking that if you just get the right equipment, you'll be there...
No doubt about it, having the right genetics for pool, will give you a huge advantage, but pool is also a very complex game where you never stop learning, understanding the physics and how they change with the enviroment and equipment, takes a lifetime.
That's why old timers with crappy eyesight and stiff joints, still can run rings around you (and me...) they simply know the table and how the physics work, better than you, based on years of experience.
Thats my last post in this thread.
