Great champion level players who said that they never did any drills?

alstl said:
I saw SVB in an interview say he doesn't do drills.
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I think what he meant by that is he doesn't put the balls down in some kind of pattern, such as all frozen on diamonds or at grid locations and then try to shoot them in a certain order or pattern.

I've seen him work on a particular shot for an hour and I don't think that was the only time he has done that.
 
CaleAYS said:
Sky Woodward said on a podcast recently he’s never done drills. Never had the patience for it or something like that. Said he plays the 12b ghost a lot.
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Johan made the Mosconi Cup team do drills. I talked to Sky one time and, since I'm big on drills, I asked him about the drills Johan gave them. Sky wasn't happy about the drills. I asked him if the drills made him a better player. He said, yes, but it's not who he is as a player and it's not what got him where he is.

If you're Popeye, you can say "I yam what I yam." The rest of us mortals should probably set up some drills.

 
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Everyone learns different so sure. Plus he could be an idiot savant and that person is naturally great. As for the majority of the rest of us humans do drills. They help.
 
9ballscorpion said:
There was this guy who hung out out my home town pool room, back in the 90's, and for awhile, it did not seem like he took the game seriously, but he just liked to shoot for fun.

This guy had zero natural ability, and was just a banger.

Then he started getting really serious about playing, and started coming in every night, getting a table, and doing drills for like 6 hours a day.

I never personally knew a player who worked so hard on their game.

This guy went from like a level 2, to a pretty strong 7, with a super nice stroke in the end.

It took a lot of work though, but he seemed to love the game so much, and really wanted to become a better player.

All those 6 hour nights of doing drills, every day, really paid off for him.
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I knew a guy like this , super nice guy had kids wife mortgage didn't gamble because he couldn't afford to lose . He actually got to a low A level completely under most peoples radar.
One of the neighboring small town hustlers kept coming over and sniping weaker players and had not booked a loser for about 2 years , playing about once a week here. He kept badgering this guy to play for money and just yada yadaed him to death. Finally another guy who had been watching him improve offered to back him , the guy was reluctant but this guy had really had him steaming a couple of times and he could use the extra money.
Hustler guy then wants to bet it up and the backers hesitant so the kid takes the whole bet himself and they play and sure enough he beats the hustler, but he made the mistake of not posting and he went to the bathroom after it was obvious the hustler guy couldn't win and so he ran out the door ,while he was in the bathroom.
To my knowledge he has never played the game he used to love again!
Welcome to pool children. Plus , Anyone can learn something from drills , it just depends how much effort you are willing , or need to put in , at your level.
 
sixpack said:
I read Mizerak's book when I was starting out. He said when you are just starting out you need to do tons and tons of drills to build skill but as you get better you need to compete more and more. Eventually, when you get to be a top player, you need competition almost exclusively with drills to work on things that might come up.

I think that viewpoint is a little bit dated. The best players in the world now do drills a lot and practice a lot more than he would have suggested.
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Good point,

to get these "best players" out of their comfort zone- that s what its about imo. To have competion is necessary- and being alone at the table challenging drills will give kind of competition, too.
 
CaleAYS said:
Sky Woodward said on a podcast recently he’s never done drills. Never had the patience for it or something like that. Said he plays the 12b ghost a lot.
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Wow, I understand now why he has such great cue ball control, and plays such strong 8 ball too. He is an amazing player.
 
alstl said:
If the ghost is a drill what would be an example of practice?
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A friendly match? Or you could say that doing drills is part of practice along with the ghost and friendly matches. Or, you could just call it all "working on my game" and can say you don't practice at all. Maybe it's better to ask, "How do you work on your game?"
 
One person’s practice is another’s torture.
I never could get into high reps.
Grampa story: Was in quarters match White Spot 1989 bar table 9 ball. At hill hill I missed the 9 and he then missed as well raking the balls to concede the game and match. The next time I saw him he said, “I set that shot up and made it 10 times straight.” I chuckled and said, “I tried mine 3 times and missed it all 3”🤷.
 
I have a slew of drills for Jin that he practices along with records for each. All catering to a specific skillset of shot and cue ball control. Tournament finishes all go up n down, sometimes in shorts bursts, other times the player is on a streak where the stars just align, of course, there are slumps as well. We have seen over and over a specific drill/shot come up in the next tournament Jin plays in, doesn't mean he will make it 100% and that the cue ball control will do as we practiced, but it does mean his percentage is much better than before practicing the drill.

I'm a metrics type person, I want proven data over time for progression. Not just tournament finishes as that can vary in true data vastly. At Jins age and skill level, the drills help a lot. It keeps me confident that we are not just idling along pretending he is improving. The drills are important to make the shot, but what they also reveal is the cue ball control to continue the drill.

Some lower level drills have a bigger margin of error on cue ball control or shot, others that get higher in level, that margin of error decreases significantly.

And yes, we were talking with Sky recently, and he did mention he just doesn't have the patience for drills :)
 
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A bud 715 fargo ( close to pro speed, I've seen him do a 7 pack ) told me he never does any drills. He does have an interesting system of training though. I've also shot at a world champ's house and I was doing the L drill on his diamond and he said something like "that ain't it". He hates "drills" but he ended up sharing his system of training and it sort of sounded like almost like a drill. Every pro I know has some sort of specific system of getting better whether they call it a drill or not. But obviously plenty of pros who heavily rely on drills. There are so many ways to get to the top.
 
alstl said:
If the ghost is a drill what would be an example of practice?
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It's all practice. First you practice fundamentals. Then you practice strategy and game situations. Then you practice higher level strategy. Then you practice winning friendly games. Then you practice winning tournament matches. Then you practice winning in the finals. Then you practice winning money. Then you practice beating people better than you. Then you practice beating people worse than you. Then you realize you need to up your game and so you practice fundamentals again...and it starts all over.

:D
 
sixpack said:
It's all practice. First you practice fundamentals. Then you practice strategy and game situations. Then you practice higher level strategy. Then you practice winning friendly games. Then you practice winning tournament matches. Then you practice winning in the finals. Then you practice winning money. Then you practice beating people better than you. Then you practice beating people worse than you. Then you realize you need to up your game and so you practice fundamentals again...and it starts all over.

:D
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I think you're joking on some level, but this is my approach to a tee. Well not the fundamental part. That's not perfect, but chipped so deeply into stone I have no interest reinventing that wheel...lol.

Every moment is practice for the next moment.
 
When I was a teenager, and obsessed with improving, I drilled for hour and hour. I didn't know any fancy / professional drills, but I would shoot the exact same shot for hours. I wouldn't practice shots that were "too hard", but rather shots I would normally make about 60-70% of the time. Through those simple repetitious drills, I could increase that 60-70% to 80-90%. I would go to the pool room that weekend and I would be noticeably better. I was improving in leaps and bounds.

One time, when I was 14 or 15, I got home from school and went right to the basement to practice. I can't recall where my parents were but that particular day I was low on the radar. I practiced all night until the school bus horn told me it was time for school the next morning. I ran out the door without anything to eat, no sleep, and in the same clothes.

As I got older and got some money in my pocket to gamble, and a car to take me to pool rooms, my drills died down to practically nothing. Coincidently enough, my improvement also slowed way down. In fact, I probably haven't improved my skills at all since those days, if I'm playing better, it's only because of experience and playing smarter.

Anyway, I really believe if I would have maintained that drive and stubbornness to keep practicing and drill the way I once did, I would be a much, much stronger player today.
 
The_JV said:
I think you're joking on some level, but this is my approach to a tee. Well not the fundamental part. That's not perfect, but chipped so deeply into stone I have no interest reinventing that wheel...lol.

Every moment is practice for the next moment.
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I’m joking only to a very little degree and that’s mostly to forestall the comments about how serious people think they should play.

that has been my approach for a long, long time.I remember a friend of mine got to the finals and lost 3 times in a row and he was so despondent. I don’t think he ever got in the finals again because he associated it with too much pain.
He was a little ahead of me development-wise. We started playing together in college but he grew up with a table at home and I didn’t. So he got there first.
Eventually I started getting to the finals and remembered what happened to him. I didn’t want that to happen to me so I reminded myself how grateful I was to be in the finals and how I could practice winning. And it was the only way to practice winning the tournament!
So I paid attention to the match. I watched my opponent and noticed where I made mistakes and mostly what I noticed was the momentum. He had me fighting for air and I couldn’t go on the attack. I noticed my body language. All of it.
Then I worked specifically on the things that I thought would help me win and you know what? I lost the next finals I was in too. But that’s ok because now it was a problem to solve. Not a loss. I made a list before I went to bed and worked on those things.
Soon after that I win a tournament and I kept winning them. At one point in 10 days I won 8 bar tournaments. It was ridiculous!
Then I made a conscious decision to approach all of pool the same way.
My league teammates sometimes think I’m not trying hard because I’m not frowning enough I guess. :) but when it comes to the key match or pressure situation I’m the one they all want to put up.
 
Bob Jewett said:
A friendly match? Or you could say that doing drills is part of practice along with the ghost and friendly matches. Or, you could just call it all "working on my game" and can say you don't practice at all. Maybe it's better to ask, "How do you work on your game?"
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I always thought of drills as setting up some balls in a specific position and trying to run them all. An example of practice would be 14.1 by yourself or the ghost where balls are random and you practice a wider variety of shots than a drill which is working on a specific part of the game.

When Shane says he doesn't do drills I take it to mean he prefers to run balls than work on a specific part of his game.
 
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gregcantrall said:
One person’s practice is another’s torture.
I never could get into high reps.
Grampa story: Was in quarters match White Spot 1989 bar table 9 ball. At hill hill I missed the 9 and he then missed as well raking the balls to concede the game and match. The next time I saw him he said, “I set that shot up and made it 10 times straight.” I chuckled and said, “I tried mine 3 times and missed it all 3”🤷.
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Adendumb to the story:
The victory put me in the point match with a player from the Wazu side of the state. The only thing I knew of him was that he had beaten Dan Louie to get to the point. I was on tilt because I didn’t know why or how I had missed the 9. I thought I was in dead punch, my opponent did too and dogged it.
So with my mind uh scrambling I went down 6-2 going to 7.
Mike Sentz (good friend) had told me at the start he had $5 bet on me. I could have given up but for his money I had to fight.😉
As I was racking I had the conversation with self. It went something like this. “Don’t worry about looking stupid (Tin Cup) you have accomplished that by repeatedly running to the 7 or 8 and uh gifting. This is a big stage (Biggest bar table event in the northwest. Had drawn Swanney once and big players from all over). Perhaps he has never been on a stage this big.(I hadn’t:wink:🤷 ) So how about if you don’t give it to him and see what happens.” He must have broken dry. I don’t remember how as I was focused again. Not sure if he got to shoot again. I prevailed.
 
The practice gives me improved skills to bring to the fight. Not sure about the heart. Just don’t lead with your face.
 
My first drill came from Mosconi. Horseshoe short draw with 5 or 6 balls into side pocket. Short draw shape is essential for straight pool which transfers nicely to 8 ball.
My favorite drill came from Grady Mathews. Just the cue ball. From the jaws corner pick a point on the rail and scratch cross side. I start with the first Diamond and go half diamond steps.
 
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