... you better listen!!!  Let me explain.

I typically play twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 - 5 hours each night.  Most weeks I try to sneak an extra hour or two at lunch on Friday's at a local pool hall that opens at 11am.  For the last month or so, I've revved up my practice a bit, trying to add another 4 - 6 hours per week, which isn't much but definitely an improvement.  I've been trying to finalize my experimentation with SEE and Pro1 and building up my confidence so I can start getting back into tournaments again.  My practice has been a little scattered and felt a little rushed at times, but something was better than nothing.

Just when I thought I had it almost figured out, I heard the same advice from 4 different sources over the last week, all independently of each other.  Not to name drop, but two of these sources were Thorsten Hohmann and Mika Immonen, definitely two guys to listen to!  Thorsten lives here in Jacksonville, and I run into him from time to time, and Mika was here for a clinic and I met up with him for lunch and a private lesson.  The other sources were a local shortstop level player, Butch, and my new Masters league partners Neal and Andy, both solid players as well.

What was this great advice?  To summarize hours of conversations, one glaring thing stood out - I was shooting the balls too hard.  Somehow in all of my experimentation with aiming systems, and in an effort to "prove" to myself that the systems were working, I lost sight of my feel for the shots and had developed a pretty punchy stroke on most shots.  I guess I was forcing the ball in the pockets, determined not to worry about the tight equipment I typically play on, I had an awesome aiming system, right?

Actually, what I was doing was making an already difficult game even harder!  I was basically demanding perfection from myself, and at the speed I was shooting I needed it for the ball to drop.  Any slight glance off the rail and the ball wouldn't go in.  Just for perspective, I wasn't slamming balls in at break speed, just punching them more than necessary, maybe 20% - 30% harder, and on shots that didn't require any sort of punch or force stroke.  To paraphrase Thorsten, shoot as soft as you can but as hard as you need to.

So I got back to basics, and started working on smooth draw and follow shots, probably 50 or 60 of them, until I was getting the same action with 30% less power.  Once I had smoothed things out a bit, I started setting up cut shots to recalibrate my speed control, and watched and heard the difference as I stroked the ball into the pocket instead of slamming it in.  And guess what?  Balls were rubbing the rail occasionally, but now they were dropping instead of rattling, thanks to the slower speed and the nice natural forward roll on the object ball.

I need to continue the recalibration process over the next few weeks and continue building confidence with the new speed.  I also need to not forget to stroke the ball harder when necessary for position etc.  I'm working on a few other basics suggested by the various sources - slowing down my backswing a bit, slight change in my grip, concentrating more on my shots - so my other system work will have to wait a bit.  But I'm starting to feel everything coming together, hopefully over the next few months I'll have some positive results to share.

Don't make my mistake - when working on something new, don't lose sight of your natural rhythm and shot speed.  And pay attention to the world around you, it might just be trying to tell you something...

Take a look at the diagram above.  I did something pretty simple – went into Word, and used the rulers (both in inches and metric) to draw a cue ball to scale, 2 1/4” in diameter.  I was also able to use the drawing tool and come up with circles to represent the cue tip that were ½” in diameter (12.7mm). An average size tip, and it worked out well since Word automatically snaps the drawing objects to the nearest ¼” marking.

I started with center ball and drew three overlapping tips going up and down to represent three increments of follow and draw, overlapping in a slightly different manner so you can see the overlaps clearly.  As you can see, what is commonly called a “tip” is actually a half tip – that is, you move the center of your tip up or down to the edge of the previous tip’s location.  If you do this three times from the center in any direction, you reach very close to the maximum you can hit without a miscue.

A few things are interesting about this.  First, what I believe most people mean when they say 1 tip of english is actually a half tip.  I believe that because most people I know, and most everything I’ve read, frequently talks about using 1, 2, or 3 tips of english, or somewhere in between.  You can see from the diagram that it’s impossible to use 3 full tips of english, if everyone went by the physical definition we would be talking about using ½, 1, or 1 ½ tips, not 1, 2, or 3. 

Another possible explanation is that they are referring to the contact patch between the tip and the cue ball.  Regardless of tip location, the contact patch is roughly 3mm in diameter.  If you look to the right of the center axis in the diagram, I’ve drawn these contact patch positions, and you can see that as you move up, and different parts of the tip are hitting different parts of the curvature of the cue ball, you get a nice progression of 1, 2, and 3 tip positions above or below center.  They are not right next to each other, and in theory you could hit spots in between these, just like you can with the regular tip positions, but they give us good reference points to work from.

Speaking of which, when hitting maximum draw or follow (or side for that matter), you can see that the cue tip is 3 half tips above center, but it is actually making contact with the cue ball roughly half way between the center and edge of the cue ball.  This is about the limit before the curvature of the cue ball prevents a solid hit, or in the case of draw before the table gets in the way.  Since most striped balls are exactly that size, you can practice hitting with maximum spin by orientating the stripe either horizontally for draw/follow or vertically for side spin, and then aiming the inner edge of your tip at the outer edge of the stripe.  If applying fresh chalk you often can also see the mark you left after the hit as well, as long as it’s not rubbed off by the table.  You must learn to hit near these maximum limits to get that smooth “whipping” action on your cue ball with a minimum of force, or if you ever want to enter a trick shot competition…  J

And finally, to dispel one last myth – while your tip shape (dime vs. nickel) might allow you to press the limits a bit more, or at least more than a poorly shaped tip, the size of the shaft doesn’t matter that much within normal limits.  I’ve heard people say they get more english with a Predator Z2 shaft, or a similar thinner shaft.  The difference between that 11.75mm shaft and my example shaft of 12.7mm is 1 mm.  Which means that for each half tip progression, the tip location is .5mm lower.  After 3 half tips, I would be 1.5mm further from the edge than with my sample drawing.   So yes I could move slightly more toward the edge with a thinner shaft in terms of “tips”, but the actual physical location of the edge of the tip in the maximum tip position for either shaft is achievable just the same.  The difference with the smaller shafts is that visually they appear to be slightly less toward the outside of the ball, or more above the table on draw shots, which may give some people the confidence to venture more toward the edge of the ball.

So be aware of the possible confusion around this, and when someone tells you to use a tip of english make sure you know which tip size they mean!