Straight Cuing Overrated?

[WobblyStroke]

The question about being overrated is all relative.

If your stroke is the weak link in your game then improving it will be a good return on your efforts.

If your stroke is imperfect but satisfactory and there are bigger issues with your cue ball control, patterns, mental game, and in other areas, then trying to improve your stroke is not the best use of your time.

I personally believe there are many people in this latter category that are beating their heads against the wall in a purist pursuit that leads to frustration and stagnation. But there are also people that really need to work on their stroke. You have to be your own coach in this game. And if other people are stubborn and ineffective, be grateful they are your competition.

Ye, the title of this thread coulda used more thought. I was just getting at what our resident troll naturalplayer been harping on... that attention to stroke and getting it perfect isn't the be all, end all. If you focus on the game rather than the stroke, your subconscious will allow you to perform at a really high level (provided u been at this a while already). With so many world class players gaming 'flawed' strokes, it makes you wonder. And these aren't journeymen pros here neither... Busty, Earl, Hendry, and Trump are all hall of famers and arguably would make the 'mount rushmore' of their sports.

 

[JolietJames]

If your stroke is straight you don't need perfect timing to shoot straight. If your stroke is bowed in or out, timing through the point of contact becomes paramount. This was told to me by a prominent pool instructor many years ago as he corrected my crooked natural stroke.
My game went way down for a month or so until the new stroke/ alignment became comfortable and consistent.

 

[Tennesseejoe]

When I started using one of the red dots on a measles ball as my target, I also thought I would have a random spread of chalk marks around the red dot, and I was interested in seeing how big that spread would be. However, I found that I missed the middle of the red dot to the right and slightly high very consistently. No matter what I try, I cannot hit the middle of the red dot--okay maybe 1/200 shots. I can go on streaks where every chalk mark for 20 shots is inside the red dot, but it's always to the right of the middle. I find it pretty frustrating. I've tried taking my cue back more to the outside, so that I swing outside to inside across the shot line--but that doesn't work either. I thought SightRight might be the answer, but I still miss the middle of the red dot the same way while employing the SighRight pre shot positioning and the SightRight stride into the shot.

I look at the object ball last.

It sounds like you have not identified where the problem starts. Is it the forearm, upper arm, shoulder, etc. Try this...shoot a few straight in shots using only your wrist. Does your cue go straight? If not, that could be where your problem starts.

 

[mikemosconi]

Let me explain it to you this way- and this applies to just about any sport- when someone learns performance based upon sound, proven fundamentals ( and in billiards that includes straight stroking) - it does not guarantee that you will play better than someone who plays in an unorthodox manner- BUT- EVERYONE's game will come off the rails from time to time.

The fundamentally orthodox player can either discover readily themselves what is going wrong with their game or a coach can pinpoint what is going wrong and the flaw can be corrected MUCH more easily than fixing a broken unorthodox style of play.

When most coaches in any sport look to help an non- orthodox style that has off the right path- they almost always try to correct the problem by suggesting a change over to more orthodox methods- because that is exactly what they know and can teach and coach- so the unorthodox player either gets frustrated trying to change or just ignores the coaching and takes much longer to get back on track than the orthodox player.

After 1 1/2 years of following Mark Wilson's orthodox training for cueing- I now can spot the reasons very easily any time I start to go south and can make corrections mid- game most of the time- I could never do this prior to my full conversion from being self taught to Mark's stroke training.

 

[WobblyStroke]

It sounds like you have not identified where the problem starts. Is it the forearm, upper arm, shoulder, etc. Try this...shoot a few straight in shots using only your wrist. Does your cue go straight? If not, that could be where your problem starts.

While it is a decent idea to isolate different parts, isolating the wrist is particularly brutal advice as you necessarily have to use it differently than you would in an actual stroke. To borrow from the best piece of basketball shooting advice I got early on from a coach, "you don't snap the wrist, the wrist snaps" (as a result of other things happening). Much the same way, the wrist action in pool isn't performed by the muscles that control the wrist but is rather the result of other things happening. To isolate the wrist and ask the performer to replicate the move doesn't actually test what is happening during the stroke but rather something else entirely, and so is a waste of time.

I'm still in the camp of keep your precise stroke and alter where you aim it rather than try to rebuild another precise stroke that hits 1/8 of a tip lower and left.

 

[hang-the-9]

Let me explain it to you this way- and this applies to just about any sport- when someone learns performance based upon sound, proven fundamentals ( and in billiards that includes straight stroking) - it does not guarantee that you will play better than someone who plays in an unorthodox manner- BUT- EVERYONE's game will come off the rails from time to time.

The fundamentally orthodox player can either discover readily themselves what is going wrong with their game or a coach can pinpoint what is going wrong and the flaw can be corrected MUCH more easily than fixing a broken unorthodox style of play.

When most coaches in any sport look to help an non- orthodox style that has off the right path- they almost always try to correct the problem by suggesting a change over to more orthodox methods- because that is exactly what they know and can teach and coach- so the unorthodox player either gets frustrated trying to change or just ignores the coaching and takes much longer to get back on track than the orthodox player.

After 1 1/2 years of following Mark Wilson's orthodox training for cueing- I now can spot the reasons very easily any time I start to go south and can make corrections mid- game most of the time- I could never do this prior to my full conversion from being self taught to Mark's stroke training.

This is a great point, and one I try to make to players I work with on their game, if you are doing 8 possible things that cause you to mess up a shot it is much harder to find which of them or which combination of them needs to be addressed. You are stand off center, if your feet are off, if your head is tilted, if your elbow is tucked, if you bridge is not stable, if you swing up or down as you shoot, etc... it's impossible to even start to play without first sorting out where the issue is with an accurate hit. It may be all of them, it may be a few, it may be one of them, but no way to know. If someone is in a solid stance, solid bridge, vision center is aligned with the cue and arm, arm goes straight, now you have a basis of finding the small other things that need to be looked at.

If you build a house of balsa wood on swampy land using a 12" ruler as the only measurement with random size bricks, don't be surprised if your 3rd floor dining room floor is crooked and the apples keep rolling off the table.