When I first learned to apply sidespin, I shot everything with TONS of english for no reason at all. It wasn't too helpful for making balls, but it was the first time I realized that sidespin made the cueball go on a curvy path if you shoot it far enough or soft enough. I loved watching the ball curve. I shot table-length shots with english alot just because I wanted to see the cueball curve off its path before it hit the object ball.
Before that, I saw pool in "1-D", as though I was playing one of those cheesy internet pool games where it looks like you staring straight down at the balls. I thought the balls only took straight lines and hit each other full, that was the only way to make a ball. Forget about position.
I started using english well before I was using it to play any decent position, but it made me see the game in "3-D" by comparison. I now viewed myself as lobbing the cueball to the side before it hit the object ball. Kind of like the arc of tossing a ball, but the arc was sideways, going down the table. Even though I use much less spin per shot now, I feel that period of my playing taught me the most about compensating for spin and changed the way i viewed the game.
