I'm sure I have said it before in this endless thread but after becoming proficient at object ball last and using it almost exclusively for years I decided to try cue ball last. I used cue ball last for over 200 hours. At the end of that weeks long test I was playing no better or no worse looking at the cue ball last. Both work, neither perfect on long enough shots, most, when you can't focus on cue ball, object ball, and pocket, all at the same time.
Some great players have used cue ball last. Many great players use object ball last. Many more said they did but video showed their eyes shifting back to the cue ball during the final stroke.
I usually tack this off topic story on as an example of what people say and what they do. I was at a major invitational benchrest shoot. The best from all over the nation, a smattering of international shooters. Benchrest shooters use a free recoil technique. Without touching any other part of the rifle carefully set up on the bags, they touch the one to two ounce trigger only and catch the rifle with their shoulder after the bullet has left the barrel. At the time maybe 95% of benchrest shooters used this technique, or so they said!
I took a walk behind the firing line during a relay I wasn't shooting in. Of the forty-five or more shooters less than five were actually shooting free recoil. The rest were touching the stock to their shoulder with a feather light touch or had their shooting hand lightly touching the rifle. I went back to my reloading bench and glued a tiny piece of 3/4" thick very soft foam rubber to my butt plate so I could feel when I was 3/4" behind my rifle. Several people commented on my recoil pad, I explained that I needed it to protect my shoulder!
What people say they do and what they do aren't always the same. Watching the best in the world, more than a few had their eyes back to the cue ball before they hit it including many of the "object ball last" pro's. I found this during another heated thread about what to look at last ten years or more ago so my info is a bit dated but probably as true now as then.
There is no ideal eye pattern, there is no ideal stroke. The truth is a human body is a piss poor design to play pool with. I think an octopus has a far better body design to play pool with but none have shown any interest in learning, demonstrating their high intelligence also!(grin)
Hu