Sport Today

Thanks in advance,
Jerry R

Lou Figueroa

Thanks Lou!

Jerry R

Pat Johnson
Chicago

Something you migh consider is fooling arround with various colours of
ferrules.  I have some mylar tape I used to try different combinations.

Donald

I have heavy astigmatism as well and sometimes have trouble playing
with glasses, especially on any table bigger than a bar box. This is
because of the curvature in my lenses causing some distortion when
bent over a shot. I find that these problems are largely resolved with
using contact lenses.

There are also the obvious mechanical problems, which may be a root
cause in and of themselves, or simply an effect from trying to correct
from a vision problem. If your eyes are giving bad info to your brain,
then your brain is going to command your body to do one or more things
to try and correct.

$.02 -Ron Shepard

Take a stripe object ball, line the outside edges of the stripe so
they are parallel with the two long rails, now lag it down and back up
table.  If you hit the exact center of the ball, the lines on the
stripe keep rolling parallel, if you miss the center, the lines roll
over at once.  This will train you to hit and find center.  Hit the
ball with a level cue and hit in the middle of the ball with a nice
slow follow through, when I do it, the ball goes up and back and stops
on my tip I leave out there, I can do this 10 times in a row with no
problem.

I know two good players at very different ages that do that.  One guy is in
his late 30's/40's will line up at the base with the back of his cue raised,
then after a few practice strokes at the base he will adjust his back hand
to hit the cueball where he wants, sometimes on his last practice stroke.
The other guy in his 70's, lines up at the base then raises his bridge hand
to adjust the hit.

Cheers,
Jim

Here is a cut and paste of what written about Tony Robles on that
site:

Quote:
Both Robles and Varner have adapted to defects by using techniques
that they never wanted to master but were forced to in order play to
play professional pool. Robles has a vision defect. It took a long
time to diagnose. When he sees the cue tip aimed at the center of the
cue ball, his cue tip is actually 1/2 tip right of center. It is an
optical illusion that he has had to compensate for by shooting all
center ball shots with what appear to him to be 1/2 tip of left
english.(to read the rest go to the above website)

Having shown all of this, the majority of amatuers don't hit center
ball when they think they are.In most cases it 's their stroke
mechanics and to a lesser degree the afformentioned vision
problems.The first time I chalked up my cue and tried to hit dead
center on a Jim Rempe* training ball showed me (chalk mark) that my
stroke needed some work as well.A few lessons form a local pro (John
Horsfell)has me hitting much, much closer to center.I'm not suggesting
mechanics is your problem, however, many of us (reading here) could
use a check up lesson from a QUALIFIED instructor.
*(you can also use a nine ball and aim for the round part of the nine
to check things out)

Some instuctors advocate that most amatuers could improve their
accuracy by shortining their bridges and backstrokes. Apparently the
longer everything is the more the bad stroke fundamentals are
accentuated.Feel free to checkout this site for info on that:

http://SportToday.org/

Other than that , take care and good luck at the eye doctors,RJ

....................Billy

with.  With  a polished ball you can see the reflection of the tip, > >
ferrule, and  shaft as you stroke.  When you are lined up straight,
everything  will look straight in the >reflection.  When you are hitting to
the  side, then everything looks curved.  This assumes that your >problem
is with setup, not with the final stroke.

Whew...That certainly sounds good, but while I use the "red circle" CB, I
don't EVER recall seeing a reflection.

Squinting old Nat

I'm gonna try that...(wondering  just how one raises the bridge with NO
lateral movenent)...will let you know what happens.

Best,
Nat

One Spanish author and carom billiard instructor recommends to the
beginning and intermediate student, 25 each per day of 1 table length
lag with center ball, then 2 table lengths, then 3 and finally 4.

From personal experience, when I was incorporating this drill into my
billiard practice sessions, my tip position and cue ball control
improved dramtically and at all stroke speeds.

One thing Hal mentioned in a letter, was whenever a player would come
to him to help diagnose and solve a problem, one of the first things
Hal said he would look at was bridge length. This included top players
such as Nick Varner.

For pool, I was taught that the bridge loop should be between 9-10
inches from the cue ball. Combined with a 9-10 inch follow-through and
approximately 2 inches for the cue ball, this would make a total
stroke length of about 20 inches. Putting this into practice did
wonders for my game when I played a lot.