Know any challenging Safety practice?

[KoolKat9Lives]

When I learned to play (mid-70's) we played 9 ball with "two misses" = BIH. Safeties within my circle didn't exist. Times have changed, eh? After a long playing hiatus, it's no wonder the weakest part of my game is defense. AAAARRRGGGHHHHH! Of the games I lose, I am giving up a high % due to poor safety/defense.

Quick aside: Inspried by AZ thread, I spent over 4 hours playing ghost yesterday in solitude. It was very challenging, and 4.5 hours seemed like 2 tops! For me, practice can kill enthusiasm if it feels like work. The challenge of beating the ghost made me more enthusiastic. And holy sh*t, stepping up the ghost by one more ball is a bear! Anyway, I believe I will be able to run more, more consistently by incorporating this into my practice.

Does anyone have a safety challenge you can practice that won't deaden your enthusiasm?

 

[Pushout]

I'd be interested in seeing something like this, myself. In case you didn't know, Irving Crane used to spend an hour a day playing himself safe at Straight pool. Don't think I could stand that, myself.

 

[gregoryg]

Safety practice..

Funny this should come up. Saw a few guys practicing yesterday and talking about things they were trying to improve on, and one of things was playing safeties better. I took lessons from Jerry Biesath, probably over ten years ago now, jeeze I'm getting old! The practice drill he taught me to learn how to play better safeties was this: Scatter some balls on the table randomly and with the cueball, just shoot whitey at any ball so it just makes contact with the object ball. No ball gets pocketed, just a soft stoke to make contact between the cue ball and whatever object ball you choose to shoot. He also told me the length of your stroke on these type of shots will not be longer than two inches, sometimes even less. Bring your bridge hand no more than two inches behind the cue ball to make sure your stroke gets shortened up. Hope this will help your safety play improve, I know once I learned this drill, mine did.

 

[KoolKat9Lives]

That sounds like a great way to improve touch. I could see myself incorporating this into practice, but after 20-30 minutes my ADD-self might get bored. I will try it, TY gregory.
Thinking aloud... I like to do things that involve winning... How about playing myself (or someone else). A solid break is made, then I play 100% safeties. The "other" player tries to complete the rack in less than "X" amount of innings. As my safety play gets better, the innings should go up. If I could get someone on a bet, I could say "betcha can't beat me in less than 20 innings".

The juice from winning drives me nutz, bringing out the best I got.