How do you control the lag?

cubc

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
How do you control the lag? Do you.. aim for the end rail and imagine it as a ball and try to double the speed of that?? what do YOU do when you lag?
 
I am simply concentrating on rolling the ball at the speed it will take to barely return back and contact the end rail at the end of the table it started from. Is there any other way?
 
you have to develop "feel" for your stroke, or your position play will suffer. There are 4 major degrees of shot speed, and pooltchr named exactly what you need to shoot. It will vary a little depending on the table condition, cloth speed and cushion rebound, but will remain in the limits of so-called pocket speed.
Bottom-line: go and practise! :)
 
cubc said:
How do you control the lag? Do you.. aim for the end rail and imagine it as a ball and try to double the speed of that?? what do YOU do when you lag?

Well, I hate to make this less complicated than it really is... but you feel the pace you need to make the ball land on the base rail.

How do you know how much pace you should put into a table long cut shot shot that then takes you off 3 rails and gets you position on the next ball ? How do you judge how to get in line on the next shot when you have a roadmap, how do you judge the pace on the CB when you break up a cluster and hold for the ball you intend to play next ? Its just a shot.

Imagine you are playing a table length safety bank onto a ball underneath your resting arm.

All the same thing. The lag is simply just a shot (ok - its a pretty important shot ! But just a shot none the less).

Use the same techniques and play that you do when you take a standard run of the mill shot.

.
 
cubc said:
How do you control the lag? Do you.. aim for the end rail and imagine it as a ball and try to double the speed of that?? what do YOU do when you lag?

It's difficult, but there is a way to control it. The first thing you need to do is practice on 1 and only table. Choose a regular table, not too fast and not too slow. You need to control your lag speed on that table. When you can perfectly control the lag on that table, you will take that table as your standard. Everytime you are playing on an other table, you need to test the speed of the current table: cloth, rolls of the balls and the rail. Is it fast or slower than your standard. That will give you a good way to control the lag.
 
Ste said:
...
Imagine you are playing a table length safety bank onto a ball underneath your resting arm.
...


.
This is what I do. I find that imagining a ball there helps a lot compared to just trying to get to the rail.
 
Funny

lol ... we all have our own way of classifying things in Pool, and our own slang terms for them.

I put it on the head string and shoot a 'soft medium' speed shot.

You see, I classify speed shots like 'soft soft', 'medium soft' 'hard soft,
'soft medium' 'medium medium' 'hard medium' 'soft hard' medium hard' and
'hard hard' in my head anyway .... :D so I, basically, have 9 different speeds of shots.
 
Vahmurka said:
... There are 4 major degrees of shot speed, ...
While it may be true that you think of shot speeds in four major groups, this is not true for all players or even most. If we classify shot speed categories that are separated by factors of three in energy -- that is, shot B has three times as much energy in the cue ball as shot A -- we end up with 10 "magnitudes" of shots that are fairly common in games. I think that a separation that large between steps is already large enough and you should not throw away six of them.
 
cubc said:
How do you control the lag? Do you.. aim for the end rail and imagine it as a ball and try to double the speed of that?? what do YOU do when you lag?
I visualize freezing the cue ball to the head rail.

As for technique, there is a way you can make your lag shots insensitive to one variable. Suppose you have your arm speed perfect, but you tend to hit the cue ball high or low. If you normally hit the cue ball right in the middle, a higher hit will cause the cue ball to go farther and a lower hit will cause it to go not as far. On the other hand, if you normally hit the cue ball at about 60% of its height, a little higher or lower will have very little effect on the distance, and both of those errors will cause the cue ball to go slower. So, hit the cue ball at about 60% of its height and visualize just barely bouncing off the head rail.
 
Thanks for the responses. I actually visualise trying to kick at a ball sitting on the rail im lagging from and it seems to do ok. but it felt kind of wrong. There are so many methods in this game and the lag being the most abstract in my opinion I was interested in how most people do it.
 
I was taught within the last year to visualize something a couple of feet beyond the end rail and shoot to just hit it. You will need to adjust a little in the beginning until you find the right distance for you but it works great.
 
Snapshot9 said:
lol ... we all have our own way of classifying things in Pool, and our own slang terms for them.

I put it on the head string and shoot a 'soft medium' speed shot.

You see, I classify speed shots like 'soft soft', 'medium soft' 'hard soft,
'soft medium' 'medium medium' 'hard medium' 'soft hard' medium hard' and
'hard hard' in my head anyway .... :D so I, basically, have 9 different speeds of shots.

Sounds like you're doing laundry and setting the dial for the warmth of water "cold cold, cold warm, warm warm.." lol

I play off the head string, aim at the first diamond..ish... center english

Lag speed.
 
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