I am not familiar with the SAM method other than I hear it's a derivative of some systems that Hal Houle teaches. Okay now that I am caught up on the thread.
I have been in some huge arguments about aiming systems over the years - THANKS TO HAL. Before he showed up one night in Denver I was blissfully unaware that there was any other way to aim other than ghostball/contact point. Sure, I was quite frustrated to miss shots that I thought were dead on. I couldn't understand why I had trouble with certain shots at different speeds.
Then this guy shows up and starts talking about lining up these two lines, and aim your tip at the quarter of the ball on the left side opposite the pocket (exaggeration) and just trust it even though it feels wrong. What happens.... I start pocketing everything. I am freaking out over this. 18 years in pool and someone is showing me something that I have never come across and IT WORKS.
I used to be a springboard diver and one of the things my coach used to say was, "if it feels wrong then it's probably right". He would say this when we were learning the techniques and frequently he was right. Sometimes you need to go against the instincts you have developed in order to retrain them to a higher level.
Hal's systems feel wrong and counterintuitive. But after a little while I found myself just stepping into the shot line automatically. No matter what the shot is. In a split second I have processed the location of the pocket, the object ball and the cueball, and decided where the cueball needs to go. So I just step in on the correct line and let it go.
Which brings me to my personal unifying theory of all the aiming systems/methods that exist. They all serve the purpose of getting the shooter into the correct position to make the shot. And for any shot there is only one position that is correct to make the ball with a few degrees margin on either side of perfect alignment.
To a lot of us who have grown up with ghost ball/contact point and adjusting for swerve/squirt, portional ball/mutiple line systems combined with backhand english is quite foreign.
I personally believe that Robert Byrne and those who emulate him are partly to blame for the ghost ball/contact point method's popularity. As Bob Jewett has said it's so simple that it's hard to NOT be able to describe it easily in print. The problem though is that it's too simple to be properly effective because it doesn't truly fix alignment. It's possible to THINK you are lined up and actually be off by enough to just miss the pocket. Add in the whole thing with adjusting for squirt/swerve/deflection and it really becomes complicated.
Some of the other aiming systems are not hard to write about. I don't put Hal's systems on here because he asked me not to. Others have done so with and without Hal's blessing. Hal himself has put some online at RSB. Fred Agnir has written some about it.
And of course there are plenty of instructors who are now teaching variations of ball to ball aiming systems and methods. All with the idea of getting the player trained to line up on the correct aiming line.
For myself. I am convinced every time I play on tables with 4" pockets and I am making the shots split the pocket. I don't dread the long uptable shots anymore, or any shot for that matter. Did I go from a B player to a AA player because of the aiming system? No, but I did get at least a ball better. I still have a lot of other things wrong with my game that will never be corrected at this point like stroking technique, body english, attitude AND still sometimes trust in the system. Because I didn't learn this in my formative years I don't always trust it and tend to go back to the old way of picking out a contact point and trying to stay fixed on it.
When I do that I miss almost every time.
Do I use SAM? No. Do I use similar methods? Yes I do and with great personal success.
Lastly, whether the pros, any pros use these systems is in question. I can't say for sure that so and so uses such and such. I can tell you that since learning of these systems I have queried a lot of my pro friends as to how they aim and a lot of them have alluded to various methods that are quite similar to many of the systems out there. Rodney Morris in particular has told me that in Hawaii he was taught to aim at portions of the ball at the beginning but that after a while it just becomes automatic.
And that's my 2cts on aiming. I am off to play in a tournament, bye.
) take measures to find someone who knows the system, I don't know how you would go about this and your only choice might be to wait for a video release but it does work, and it is used.
