My son in-law wanted to learn how to play pool. The only pool he had played was in my basement and he just simply couldn't play at all.
So I said I'd try to help him learn and we started working on it every Monday or Tuesday evening each week. After getting him into an acceptable stance and a little about stoking straight we finally got him to be able to make a medium length straight shot most of the time.
He was really struggling with cut shots though. I explained the ghost ball and parallel lines to show where the contact points were and he said he understood it but still had some trouble. He would walk around behind the object ball and look to find the contact point but still miss and miss by a lot sometimes.
Then I did something that made a big difference. This seemed to turn a light on for him. I got out another cue ball. Set up shots for him and had him place the cue ball in what he thought the ghost ball position was. But he had to do this without walking around behind the object ball. I made him reach out from the shooting angle and place it there. Then we would check to see if it was right. After doing this a lot he got better and better at placing it and before we knew it he was starting to make all the easy shots center pocket and at least coming close on the slightly tougher cuts.
When I thought to have him do this it was just something that crossed my mind in desperation. I didn't know that it was going to be a thing that would make such a big difference in his perception of the shots. So I thought I'd put it up here in case someone has to teach their son in-law this might come in handy.
Anyone else used this.
So I said I'd try to help him learn and we started working on it every Monday or Tuesday evening each week. After getting him into an acceptable stance and a little about stoking straight we finally got him to be able to make a medium length straight shot most of the time.
He was really struggling with cut shots though. I explained the ghost ball and parallel lines to show where the contact points were and he said he understood it but still had some trouble. He would walk around behind the object ball and look to find the contact point but still miss and miss by a lot sometimes.
Then I did something that made a big difference. This seemed to turn a light on for him. I got out another cue ball. Set up shots for him and had him place the cue ball in what he thought the ghost ball position was. But he had to do this without walking around behind the object ball. I made him reach out from the shooting angle and place it there. Then we would check to see if it was right. After doing this a lot he got better and better at placing it and before we knew it he was starting to make all the easy shots center pocket and at least coming close on the slightly tougher cuts.
When I thought to have him do this it was just something that crossed my mind in desperation. I didn't know that it was going to be a thing that would make such a big difference in his perception of the shots. So I thought I'd put it up here in case someone has to teach their son in-law this might come in handy.
Anyone else used this.
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