gripping further back on the cue, Bob Jewett comment
- Thread starter ShootingArts
- Start date
I have nothing extremely useful to add to this post, so jump over this post now ... you have been warned!
Comparing snooker players earnings to pool players earnings and trying to base it on their grip placement, stroke, or even their favorite type of music is a false comparison. It's the same as saying red cars get more speeding tickets. Most sports cars are red, most people that buy sports cars tend to speed, people who tend to speed more get tickets. It has nothing to do with the color of the car yet people make that extrapolation. Top snooker players make more than top pool players because snooker is way more popular in the countries in which there are snooker tournaments, hence larger payouts and earnings.
That minor point being made ... I know someone around my area that spent a good amount of money changing their wrap from leather to lizard skin and swore it made him play better. The funny thing is, every single shot I've ever watched him take has him holding the cue below the wrap. I just never had the heart to point it out to him, hehe.
Comparing snooker players earnings to pool players earnings and trying to base it on their grip placement, stroke, or even their favorite type of music is a false comparison. It's the same as saying red cars get more speeding tickets. Most sports cars are red, most people that buy sports cars tend to speed, people who tend to speed more get tickets. It has nothing to do with the color of the car yet people make that extrapolation. Top snooker players make more than top pool players because snooker is way more popular in the countries in which there are snooker tournaments, hence larger payouts and earnings.
That minor point being made ... I know someone around my area that spent a good amount of money changing their wrap from leather to lizard skin and swore it made him play better. The funny thing is, every single shot I've ever watched him take has him holding the cue below the wrap. I just never had the heart to point it out to him, hehe.
Buddy Hall shot pretty good with this style. (short bridge - right hand near the butt plate)
And Jimmy Moore and Cornbread were similar as they slipped on their
final stroke...although their bridge was a bit longer.
Buddy had a Bludworth made with the linen wrap going almost to the
butt plate...i had Mike Johnson make me one like it..it's great
i didn't read through this entire thread, but this subject has caught my interest over the years. if it hasn't already been mentioned, gripping further toward the butt on the cue will reduce any given lateral movement in your stroke. in other words, if your back hand moves 1/8 of an inch laterally if your back hand is on the butt, and say you mishit the cueball by 2mm. Well, if your back hand was further toward the front of the cue, with that same 1/8 inch lateral movement, the mishit would be greater than 2mm (eg 2.5mm).
Don't the old instruction books from that era suggest gripping 3 to 4 fingers behind the balance point? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere. I can't do it though.
MULLY
I'll take a shot at this, then expand on it to fit the OP.
Basically what this is saying, and correctly so, is that the cue's balance point does NOT change in relation to your hand placement.
By that I mean that if a cue balances at 19" from the butt cap, then it does so regardless of whether you grip the cue at the butt cap or in the middle of the wrap.
What changes is the mechanics, and thus the feel of the cue during the stroke. By mechanics, I mean your length of stroke, follow through, etc. By feel, I just mean that if, for example, a cue feels a little butt heavy when held towards the middle of the wrap, it will feel *less* butt heavy if you grip it at the butt cap. This is because more (or in this case ALL) of the butt is now in front of your hand and is being "Pushed".
Now back to the original question and how this applies - I think that this just shows that what feels right to you, probably IS right for you!
Last edited:
perception
You are right, the perception of the weight of the cue changes hugely with fairly small movements of the grip. It doesn't matter that the cue is 58-60" long, the grip hand is only a few inches from the balance point the way most people grip the cue. Moving the grip two inches further back may be a 50% change in the distance from the balance point making the cue feel hugely different. This is very obvious when moving the hand forward bunting. Get your hand forward of the balance point and the cue will come up off of an open bridge if you try to shoot normally. You have to apply a little down pressure on the tip end with the grip or use a closed bridge.
From something I saw in another post, interesting to see that almost no idea is really new. I favor wrapless cues because I don't like the feel of my hand on two surfaces and my hand often ends up half on and half off of the wrap on wrapped cues. I've been meaning to wrap one pretty much all of the way back to the buttcap and try it. I see I'll be in good company if I do!
Hu
You are right, the perception of the weight of the cue changes hugely with fairly small movements of the grip. It doesn't matter that the cue is 58-60" long, the grip hand is only a few inches from the balance point the way most people grip the cue. Moving the grip two inches further back may be a 50% change in the distance from the balance point making the cue feel hugely different. This is very obvious when moving the hand forward bunting. Get your hand forward of the balance point and the cue will come up off of an open bridge if you try to shoot normally. You have to apply a little down pressure on the tip end with the grip or use a closed bridge.
From something I saw in another post, interesting to see that almost no idea is really new. I favor wrapless cues because I don't like the feel of my hand on two surfaces and my hand often ends up half on and half off of the wrap on wrapped cues. I've been meaning to wrap one pretty much all of the way back to the buttcap and try it. I see I'll be in good company if I do!
Hu
I've never seen anyone using a "slip stroke". I will always believe it's a figment of peoples imagination if they think they see or do it themselves.
I've seen video of a few people
Craig,
I've seen video of a few people, done right it looks like their arm is made out of rubber or that they at least have an extra joint or two in their arm. I watched a little video BlackJack sent me over and over for thirty minutes or more of a player using a slip stroke, it just seemed like magic. As noted, I have played with it and I had a local shortstop trying it when he passed by my table while I was playing with it.
Seems I am in permanent building mode since Katrina, I'll be building my forth and hopefully final shop in a couple years. One of the plans is to have room for a pool table. If that comes to pass I will spend some time on the slip stroke. It is a very useful stroke to have in your arsenal.
Oddly enough I found it fine for some delicate shots. Get the stroke speed and rhythm right on the practice strokes and then the final stroke can be exactly the same as the practice strokes except allowing the hand to slip back a little on the final backstroke. This makes the tip hit the cue ball on the next "practice stroke" while maintaining exactly the same stroke speed, rhythm, and pattern as before. On these shots the follow through is only the amount of the slip stroke less the distance you set up from the cue ball to begin with when addressing the cue ball.
Follow through is not a requirement with a slip stroke. Things like soft draw shots where I normally use a long follow through to be sure I hit the cue ball cleanly and exactly as intended, I can only follow through the same length as my practice strokes in congested areas, the tip might not go all the way through the area where the cue ball was at. Other times on long straight shots I usually do add a follow through but I think I'll drop that if and when I develop a slip stroke, it isn't really needed.
There is always more than one way to skin a cat. Note Jesse Allred's jacked up one handed shooting. When it seems a perfect stroke would be most important with no bridge to somewhat straighten a stroke he locks the elbow and uses that shoulder joint so often condemned by the pendulum folks and he uses his wrist.
I'm not advocating the slip stroke for others. It is beautiful done correctly, it is fun, and it is effective for many shots. All three are good reasons for me to work with it. I'm a bit of a sucker for trying to keep almost lost skills alive anyway.
Hu
Craig,
I've seen video of a few people, done right it looks like their arm is made out of rubber or that they at least have an extra joint or two in their arm. I watched a little video BlackJack sent me over and over for thirty minutes or more of a player using a slip stroke, it just seemed like magic. As noted, I have played with it and I had a local shortstop trying it when he passed by my table while I was playing with it.
Seems I am in permanent building mode since Katrina, I'll be building my forth and hopefully final shop in a couple years. One of the plans is to have room for a pool table. If that comes to pass I will spend some time on the slip stroke. It is a very useful stroke to have in your arsenal.
Oddly enough I found it fine for some delicate shots. Get the stroke speed and rhythm right on the practice strokes and then the final stroke can be exactly the same as the practice strokes except allowing the hand to slip back a little on the final backstroke. This makes the tip hit the cue ball on the next "practice stroke" while maintaining exactly the same stroke speed, rhythm, and pattern as before. On these shots the follow through is only the amount of the slip stroke less the distance you set up from the cue ball to begin with when addressing the cue ball.
Follow through is not a requirement with a slip stroke. Things like soft draw shots where I normally use a long follow through to be sure I hit the cue ball cleanly and exactly as intended, I can only follow through the same length as my practice strokes in congested areas, the tip might not go all the way through the area where the cue ball was at. Other times on long straight shots I usually do add a follow through but I think I'll drop that if and when I develop a slip stroke, it isn't really needed.
There is always more than one way to skin a cat. Note Jesse Allred's jacked up one handed shooting. When it seems a perfect stroke would be most important with no bridge to somewhat straighten a stroke he locks the elbow and uses that shoulder joint so often condemned by the pendulum folks and he uses his wrist.
I'm not advocating the slip stroke for others. It is beautiful done correctly, it is fun, and it is effective for many shots. All three are good reasons for me to work with it. I'm a bit of a sucker for trying to keep almost lost skills alive anyway.
Hu
I do not think this is vague at all! I also agree 100%
As has already been said, you should grip your cue so that your arm is perpendicular to the floor when the cue tip is at the cue ball. This will be determined by your wingspan and the length of your bridge. The balance of the cue will have ZERO effect on this.
Quick question to those in this camp- After playing with your cue for many years and developing your specific mechanics including bridge length and grip placement. do you throw all that out the window if someone hands you a different cue? Seriously, let's say you left your cue at home ( or you have a tip pop off, etc) do you now find the balnace point and completley change your grip placement for this new cue? What about your bridge length, do you change that too? After drilling in your mechanics and practicing them to become automatic and repeatable, do you let a cue dictate how you will play? Does this seem like a good idea?
I am well aware that mosconi as well as others have stated to grip at or about the balance point. Some great players have also used a side arm stroke ( usually as a result of learning the game at a young age), should you do this?
How would you feel if you go to your doctor and he makes it known that he learned all he needed to know about the medical profession from the available information in 1945? Let's be honest here for a minute. Many things, including pool instruction, have come a long way in the last 40 years or so. That is what Randy was saying ( in far less words than I) in his comment about what the new books might say.
You can ALWAYS find examples of very good or great players who have some quirks or even what some would consider bad mechanics. Does this mean that we should TEACH this as the correct way? USUALLY when advice is asked for, it is in the context of what is the BEST or most efficient way to achieve X.
I have never heard someone ask "If I wanted to practice very hard and overcome certain mechanical errors and compensate for less than ideal fundamentals, How should I do....":grin:
The fact remains that MANY players even great ones learned very informally and made certain characteristics their own and still have achieved a great level. They play great pool IN SPITE of their mechanics, not because of them! They have still put in enough time to hone their game and have a very repeatable and consistant stroke, but that DOES NOT mean it is how someone who is seeking the correct and most efficient way to do things should be encouraged to do them.
Well, I think I have more or less said EXACTLY what Randy said. He was able to do it in far less words than I. It seemed like for some, it was not clear enough, or wanted to have a much longer explanation. I think this is long enough, yes?
poolpro<---------- rarely at a loss for words.:thumbup:
Jw
Last edited:
true enough with one little caveat
Left everything you said in there since it is all true enough except with one little caveat. Chances are that a player's cue was originally selected because the balance point suited his bridge and grip lengths or that his bridge and grip lengths were originally influenced by the balance point of his cue or the house cues he played with before owning a cue.
Minor differences in balance points mean little particularly if you already grip the cue a significant distance from the balance point on shots where the cue ball location lets you choose bridge length and grip point. I think we have all tried to play with a badly out of balance cue at one time or another and know how bad that stinks though!
Hu
Left everything you said in there since it is all true enough except with one little caveat. Chances are that a player's cue was originally selected because the balance point suited his bridge and grip lengths or that his bridge and grip lengths were originally influenced by the balance point of his cue or the house cues he played with before owning a cue.
Minor differences in balance points mean little particularly if you already grip the cue a significant distance from the balance point on shots where the cue ball location lets you choose bridge length and grip point. I think we have all tried to play with a badly out of balance cue at one time or another and know how bad that stinks though!
Hu
Thanks for the reply.
I am not going to disagree with your basic point. Obviously how a cue feels in your hand will affect your decision to buy/play with it. I personally believe that a cue's balance is a very important factor of it's feel. Assuming I am actually able to try out a cue before buying it, I rarely even ask what the weight is, I am more concerned with how it feels in my hand. A large part of that is how it is balanced. Two cues can have the exact same overall weight, but one will feel lighter than the other one.
As far as cue charactristics, there is the "hit" which is how it feels at the moment of contact- which is mostly what kind of feedback get transmitted to your hand. Then there is how the cue feels in your hand the rest of the time ( meaning every moment that you are NOT contacting the ball). Balance is prob one of the biggest factors here. Sometimes I will LOVE the hit of a cue, but not care for the way it feels in my hand, and sometimes the opposite is true! I evaluate cues separately on these points, then take the cue as a whole.
However, the rest of my post dealt with the genral ideas that " so and so does it this way, Are you going to tell me he is wrong? He is a top player.." etc. etc. I hear this kind of talk all the time and I do not feel it is a fair argument at all. Assuming you have the same amount of talent, time invested , experience, and work ethic of that player, then YES you absolutely CAN do it just like that and have great results! Then there are the rest of us! Time is better spent without having to overcome obstacles and bad habits ( especially self imposed ones!) and being able to focus on other more productive aspects of the game. In other words... this game is hard enough, why do you want to make it more challenging?
Besides, for every anomaly of a top player, there are 20 or more with textbook ( or damn close) fundamentals. So by the same logic, if showing ONE player is proof of a less than ideal form as acceptable, than there is 20 times the proof AGAINST it! You do not get to ignore a mountain of evidence and focus on a single rock to prove your point.
I will say one more thing though. I feel that saying a cue should dictate where you grip it, to me, is like saying that the shoes you wear should dictate what your proper stance should be! Different footwear will have different "feels" and even heights! Could you imagine someone making a comment about someone's stance and replying " Well, I AM wearing Nike's, and as everyone knows they use a 3/8" foam padding. So I adjust my stance accordingly to compensate for that difference."
I am not going to agree with that kind of thinking. If everyone is happy with letting their cue tell them what proper fundamentals are, that is fine. I just will not be going over to that camp.
Jw
Last edited:
We seem pretty close to the same track
Thanks for your posts, I do appreciate the careful thought you have given them!
I think if you look at the very elite players you will find most have individual quirks. I just watched Shane play a live match less than an hour ago. On his break and many shots he was practice stroking Bustamonte style with the cue tip aiming extremely low left. I don't know how long he has been doing that, first time I ever noticed it was today. I don't think the quirks make players great, obviously they don't keep them from being great either. Rhetorical question not expecting you to dig and answer but if you select your current top ten players I think you will find known quirks in at least half of their games.
Shoes may not change your stance but they can certainly change your stride if you are a runner. They can cripple a runner even. Maybe not permanently but for months. Been there and done that. Wrecked months of training with the newest wonder shoe back around '93. About stance, I do wonder now. I wore medium heeled cowboy boots throughout my gambling years. True story, when I moved to a smallish city and had to special order boots to fit it took me three weeks to learn how to walk in tennis shoes again after over twenty years in boots! I wonder if I would play better if I broke out my cowboy boots instead of the walking shoes I play in now? Sheeyit! Scotty plays pretty sporty in cowboy boots maybe that's what I need!
A player doesn't necessarily say that I'm going to move my hand to right here on this cue because of the balance point. However they do over time usually grip a cue in a sweet spot over and over given a choice. That sweet spot has a ton to do with where the cue balances to suit the player I think.
Joking aside we seem to share the same viewpoint about copying other players. Nothing wrong with trying something we see somebody doing, foolish to lock into it as "the one true right way" because so and so does it and he's a playing motorscooter.
When I came back to pool three or four years ago after pretty much a twenty year break from pool I went with the equipment other modern players were using even though I despised a tink every time I hit a cue ball. I'm going back to a softer tip, softer ferrule, other changes to what worked for me. I am also changing my style a bit. This thread was started precisely to avoid a wrong turn if someone could give a concrete reason why I shouldn't grip a cue further back. I have seen some thoughts back and forth but no real deal breaker. Hard to argue that I'm not more comfortable at the table with my hand further back and I seem to be pocketing more balls. That may be because of genuine better mechanics for me or it may simply be because I am more comfortable.
Hu
Thanks for your posts, I do appreciate the careful thought you have given them!
I think if you look at the very elite players you will find most have individual quirks. I just watched Shane play a live match less than an hour ago. On his break and many shots he was practice stroking Bustamonte style with the cue tip aiming extremely low left. I don't know how long he has been doing that, first time I ever noticed it was today. I don't think the quirks make players great, obviously they don't keep them from being great either. Rhetorical question not expecting you to dig and answer but if you select your current top ten players I think you will find known quirks in at least half of their games.
Shoes may not change your stance but they can certainly change your stride if you are a runner. They can cripple a runner even. Maybe not permanently but for months. Been there and done that. Wrecked months of training with the newest wonder shoe back around '93. About stance, I do wonder now. I wore medium heeled cowboy boots throughout my gambling years. True story, when I moved to a smallish city and had to special order boots to fit it took me three weeks to learn how to walk in tennis shoes again after over twenty years in boots! I wonder if I would play better if I broke out my cowboy boots instead of the walking shoes I play in now? Sheeyit! Scotty plays pretty sporty in cowboy boots maybe that's what I need!
A player doesn't necessarily say that I'm going to move my hand to right here on this cue because of the balance point. However they do over time usually grip a cue in a sweet spot over and over given a choice. That sweet spot has a ton to do with where the cue balances to suit the player I think.
Joking aside we seem to share the same viewpoint about copying other players. Nothing wrong with trying something we see somebody doing, foolish to lock into it as "the one true right way" because so and so does it and he's a playing motorscooter.
When I came back to pool three or four years ago after pretty much a twenty year break from pool I went with the equipment other modern players were using even though I despised a tink every time I hit a cue ball. I'm going back to a softer tip, softer ferrule, other changes to what worked for me. I am also changing my style a bit. This thread was started precisely to avoid a wrong turn if someone could give a concrete reason why I shouldn't grip a cue further back. I have seen some thoughts back and forth but no real deal breaker. Hard to argue that I'm not more comfortable at the table with my hand further back and I seem to be pocketing more balls. That may be because of genuine better mechanics for me or it may simply be because I am more comfortable.
Hu
Apologies for the late post to a thread that may have run its course (over recent weeks I have not been able to give this forum the attention it deserves); but I think that there is one point that is still worth making.
Hu – I would not be surprised if consciously changing your grip position has had a negative impact on your game. For someone of your experience, surely the best approach is to first get happy with the other parts of your stance, alignment etc and then and then let the hand grip the cue where it wants. To do anything else is to let the tail wag the dog.
IMHO for any individual, the optimum position of the grip hand will primarily depend on three factors:
The length of the bridge;
The length of the cue;
The stance.
There are other influences, eg whether at the ’set’ position your forearm is vertical or slightly in front of vertical; whether your wrist is held straight down or perhaps cocked slightly forward. But the effect of these is usually relatively minor.
The influence of bridge length and cue length have been covered earlier in the thread; but the influence of the stance has not. And while the reason why snooker players tend to hold the cue further back is partly their longer bridge (generally preferred on the bigger tables, and partly their shorter cue (usual length 57”-58”), the typical snooker stance also plays a big part.
The reason why stance is so important is that there can be a huge effect on effective ‘wing span’ coming from how much you push the shoulder of your bridging arm forwards, the shoulder of your cuing arm back, and from how much you rotate your collar bone relative to the line of the shot.
To illustrate the effect of this twisting and stretching, I remember the snooker player Steve Davis once saying that when he stands up and holds both his arms out straight in front of him, after years of playing snooker the bridging arm reaches a good 2 inches further than the cuing arm.
It is also very noticeable that if you watch novice snooker players who imitate more experienced players by getting down low on the shot and holding the cue near the end, you will see that their cuing arm is way back from the vertical. This is because they have not yet started to twist their upper body in the way that more seasoned players have become accustomed to. Again this illustrates the relationship between body position and where you grip the cue.
So assuming that you have reasonably good fundamentals, changing your grip position is likely to either result in your forearm rest position changing or in your stance / alignment changing. I said earlier, I think that this is the tail wagging the dog, and quite likely to give an overall negative effect.
Actually this is a particular case of a general phenomenon that I have found makes the analysis of the billiard stroke very complicated – and often very controversial. This is that different parts of the technique are interconnected. In many cases if you change one thing, you affect something else. What’s more the interconnectedness of seemingly distinct components is sometimes not at all obvious. But that is probably a subject for another thread.
Hu – I would not be surprised if consciously changing your grip position has had a negative impact on your game. For someone of your experience, surely the best approach is to first get happy with the other parts of your stance, alignment etc and then and then let the hand grip the cue where it wants. To do anything else is to let the tail wag the dog.
IMHO for any individual, the optimum position of the grip hand will primarily depend on three factors:
The length of the bridge;
The length of the cue;
The stance.
There are other influences, eg whether at the ’set’ position your forearm is vertical or slightly in front of vertical; whether your wrist is held straight down or perhaps cocked slightly forward. But the effect of these is usually relatively minor.
The influence of bridge length and cue length have been covered earlier in the thread; but the influence of the stance has not. And while the reason why snooker players tend to hold the cue further back is partly their longer bridge (generally preferred on the bigger tables, and partly their shorter cue (usual length 57”-58”), the typical snooker stance also plays a big part.
The reason why stance is so important is that there can be a huge effect on effective ‘wing span’ coming from how much you push the shoulder of your bridging arm forwards, the shoulder of your cuing arm back, and from how much you rotate your collar bone relative to the line of the shot.
To illustrate the effect of this twisting and stretching, I remember the snooker player Steve Davis once saying that when he stands up and holds both his arms out straight in front of him, after years of playing snooker the bridging arm reaches a good 2 inches further than the cuing arm.
It is also very noticeable that if you watch novice snooker players who imitate more experienced players by getting down low on the shot and holding the cue near the end, you will see that their cuing arm is way back from the vertical. This is because they have not yet started to twist their upper body in the way that more seasoned players have become accustomed to. Again this illustrates the relationship between body position and where you grip the cue.
So assuming that you have reasonably good fundamentals, changing your grip position is likely to either result in your forearm rest position changing or in your stance / alignment changing. I said earlier, I think that this is the tail wagging the dog, and quite likely to give an overall negative effect.
Actually this is a particular case of a general phenomenon that I have found makes the analysis of the billiard stroke very complicated – and often very controversial. This is that different parts of the technique are interconnected. In many cases if you change one thing, you affect something else. What’s more the interconnectedness of seemingly distinct components is sometimes not at all obvious. But that is probably a subject for another thread.
a great post!
Siz,
A whole lot better later than never! You are someone else I can count on for excellent posts. You are absolutely right that focusing on one portion of the way we shoot ignoring that everything is interconnected is a major error. A real issue for me is that 20 years and fifty pounds later I can't maintain the low stance I once used. I have worn a beard for forty years now and for very long fine cut shots I used to get down and slide the cue along the right side of my jaw with the beard making an excellent sliding surface. There is a jowl there instead of a jaw now and if I got that low it would take half the guys in the pool room to straighten me back up again!
My stance has to be higher now, not an option. Twisting a lot in my stance is also no longer an option. However it seems that I should have made minimum changes to the rest of my set-up to accommodate these physical issues and kept most of the rest of my style. I treat bar boxes a lot more casually than I do the nine footers cowboying things to my heart's content. My game usually jumps most amazingly, a genuine jump not just the expected jump going from the nine footer to the bar box.
Even on the nine foot tables I have more fun and make more balls just bending over and shooting the balls. When I get in the "right stance" with my fore arm perpendicular to the floor and everything in the "right" orientation I shoot like crap. Heaven help me if I try to use any of the aiming methods taught on this forum! Eyeballing works, trying to quantify how I aim in any way doesn't.
Speaking of everything interconnected, the pendulum stroke seems to need a fairly low stance. When I get low for a few shots the pendulum works OK. When I return to my normal higher stance the pendulum then feels far less stable than letting the whole arm work naturally.
Seems that like many others I'm going to have to throw convention out the window and let my body align and work how it wants to, not conform to some somewhat abstract concept of what right is.
Hu
Siz,
A whole lot better later than never! You are someone else I can count on for excellent posts. You are absolutely right that focusing on one portion of the way we shoot ignoring that everything is interconnected is a major error. A real issue for me is that 20 years and fifty pounds later I can't maintain the low stance I once used. I have worn a beard for forty years now and for very long fine cut shots I used to get down and slide the cue along the right side of my jaw with the beard making an excellent sliding surface. There is a jowl there instead of a jaw now and if I got that low it would take half the guys in the pool room to straighten me back up again!
My stance has to be higher now, not an option. Twisting a lot in my stance is also no longer an option. However it seems that I should have made minimum changes to the rest of my set-up to accommodate these physical issues and kept most of the rest of my style. I treat bar boxes a lot more casually than I do the nine footers cowboying things to my heart's content. My game usually jumps most amazingly, a genuine jump not just the expected jump going from the nine footer to the bar box.
Even on the nine foot tables I have more fun and make more balls just bending over and shooting the balls. When I get in the "right stance" with my fore arm perpendicular to the floor and everything in the "right" orientation I shoot like crap. Heaven help me if I try to use any of the aiming methods taught on this forum! Eyeballing works, trying to quantify how I aim in any way doesn't.
Speaking of everything interconnected, the pendulum stroke seems to need a fairly low stance. When I get low for a few shots the pendulum works OK. When I return to my normal higher stance the pendulum then feels far less stable than letting the whole arm work naturally.
Seems that like many others I'm going to have to throw convention out the window and let my body align and work how it wants to, not conform to some somewhat abstract concept of what right is.
Hu
Well put Hu!
Hu,
The man in that video was the late great Pat Howey, aka poolshark52. If you would like, I can send you more video - Pat was a pleasure to watch, a pleasure to talk to, and a pleasure to play with.
Pat Howey - Side Pocket Break
Where my grip hand is on the cue is dependant upon the type of shot I'm hitting, my bridge length for the shot selected, and the power I want to hit it with. On delicate shots that demand exact precision, and follow shots, I bridge closer to the CB and "choke up" on the cue, with my hand at nearly the top of the wrap. I tend to use a medium length bridge with a medium length grip (middle of the wrap) for most shots. For shots I need to hit harder (usually draw, table-length draw/stop/kill, and breaks), I'll use a longer bridge and adjust my grip to the bottom of the wrap.
That's just what I do, but my forearm/elbow is generally at 90 degrees on impact. I personally like to finish my stroke tip down on almost all shots except follows.
I also use an open bridge on almost all my shots except shots hit below center and sometimes shots with extreme english. But that also depends on the power I put into the stroke. I tend to stroke soft, so I love the open bridge, but on shots hit hard I use a closed bridge (which are usually draw shots). On the break I use a rail bridge regardless of the game. I'll give up 6-12 inches from headstring in exchange for the stability of the rail bridge, even breaking 8 ball on the big tables. That could be because I have small hands though.
That's just what I do, but my forearm/elbow is generally at 90 degrees on impact. I personally like to finish my stroke tip down on almost all shots except follows.
I also use an open bridge on almost all my shots except shots hit below center and sometimes shots with extreme english. But that also depends on the power I put into the stroke. I tend to stroke soft, so I love the open bridge, but on shots hit hard I use a closed bridge (which are usually draw shots). On the break I use a rail bridge regardless of the game. I'll give up 6-12 inches from headstring in exchange for the stability of the rail bridge, even breaking 8 ball on the big tables. That could be because I have small hands though.
Last edited:
That is what I thought
David,
Sorry for the slow reply, I missed the last couple of posts in this thread. I'd much like to see more of Pat Howey playing, I thought that was who you had sent video of but I wasn't sure enough to put the name out there. I was also thinking that you had looked for the particular clip you had sent me showing the slip stroke from the right side awhile back without finding it though.
What some people fail to understand is that the beauty and pleasure in some activities justify the effort to learn them much like playing a musical instrument solely for your own pleasure. The slip stroke certainly isn't a must to play great pool but it is obvious to me at least that it isn't a hindrance. I want to master it or at least become reasonably competent just because it is a skill I admire. I also have a feeling that while it seems counter-intuitive that it might also aid in gaining "touch" something I have lost with the newer superfast cloth and rails and admittedly a lot less time on the table than when I was young and pool was the center of my world.
Working on the slip stroke also changed my normal stroke a little, to my benefit. I didn't keep practicing the slip stroke and lost that benefit over time. Regularly practicing the slip stroke might be a great "drill" even if I don't use it as my primary stroke in a game.
Hu
David,
Sorry for the slow reply, I missed the last couple of posts in this thread. I'd much like to see more of Pat Howey playing, I thought that was who you had sent video of but I wasn't sure enough to put the name out there. I was also thinking that you had looked for the particular clip you had sent me showing the slip stroke from the right side awhile back without finding it though.
What some people fail to understand is that the beauty and pleasure in some activities justify the effort to learn them much like playing a musical instrument solely for your own pleasure. The slip stroke certainly isn't a must to play great pool but it is obvious to me at least that it isn't a hindrance. I want to master it or at least become reasonably competent just because it is a skill I admire. I also have a feeling that while it seems counter-intuitive that it might also aid in gaining "touch" something I have lost with the newer superfast cloth and rails and admittedly a lot less time on the table than when I was young and pool was the center of my world.
Working on the slip stroke also changed my normal stroke a little, to my benefit. I didn't keep practicing the slip stroke and lost that benefit over time. Regularly practicing the slip stroke might be a great "drill" even if I don't use it as my primary stroke in a game.
Hu
excellent information
The players that were old players in the sixties and seventies that I copied moved their hands around on the cue stick for different shots. It's a method that certainly has value. I do it sometimes with excellent results but it is one more thing I don't do consistently anymore. Things like this are why I say I need to spend my time rebuilding my old game instead of trying to learn one new thing after another that pops up on the forum.
You pointed out something else I am a big believer in, the break off of the head rail. If we need to for the angle breaking off of the side rail is OK and on one side it works well, side depending on if you are left or right handed. When breaking from the kitchen though, I find it makes much more sense for me to give up a few inches of extra travel on the cue ball and gain the stability of the rail and another even more valuable asset in my opinion. When we break from the headstring in the kitchen the motion of our body is fairly constricted. When we break from the head rail we are much freer to move and increase both speed and accuracy.
Hu
The players that were old players in the sixties and seventies that I copied moved their hands around on the cue stick for different shots. It's a method that certainly has value. I do it sometimes with excellent results but it is one more thing I don't do consistently anymore. Things like this are why I say I need to spend my time rebuilding my old game instead of trying to learn one new thing after another that pops up on the forum.
You pointed out something else I am a big believer in, the break off of the head rail. If we need to for the angle breaking off of the side rail is OK and on one side it works well, side depending on if you are left or right handed. When breaking from the kitchen though, I find it makes much more sense for me to give up a few inches of extra travel on the cue ball and gain the stability of the rail and another even more valuable asset in my opinion. When we break from the headstring in the kitchen the motion of our body is fairly constricted. When we break from the head rail we are much freer to move and increase both speed and accuracy.
Hu