Evolution of an Aiming Style - Part 1

Ken Tewksbury taught me a lot of things that helped, but he also tried to teach me how to aim, and in the process messed me up for a good long while.  Everyone has their own way of deciding where the cue ball should hit the object ball in order to make a shot, and some (like me, before I took the lessons with Ken) rely on "feel", using experience as a guide.  Unfortunately, between the lack of practice and my new stance and grip (see the last post), experience was not really helping me much.  As I was learning ways to move the cue ball around the table to set up the next shot, I was losing the ability to make the initial shot, and it was very frustrating.

When I voiced my frustrations to Ken, he told me that he "only ever aims at three points - the base of the object ball (where the ball hits the table), the left edge, and the right edge".  I could not believe that aiming could be this simple, but I was willing to grasp at anything, so I practiced with these three points in mind.  It soon became evident that there were many shots that would not go in based on these three points alone, and when I voiced this to Ken at our next lesson, he admitted that he had simplified quite a bit in an effort to reassure me.  THAT did not work...now I was as unsure as ever.

During one of my practice sessions at Buster's, I met a guy named Andy and played some nineball with him.  I noticed that he seemed to have some sort of aiming system, as he was lining up all of his shots using the same pre-shot routine, and most of his shots were going in.  After our match, which he won handily (I still had no confidence on my shots), I asked him about his aiming system and he was nice enough to try to explain it to me.  He said it was called CTE and I could look it up online.  I could not understand his explanations, but the good result from all this was that I went online to look up various aiming systems to try and find one that DID make sense to me.

The aiming system I found that DID make sense to me is one that is based on the angles that appear most on the pool table.  Except for thin cuts, almost all shots fall into angles of 15,30, or 45 degrees.  The closer the object ball is to the pocket, the larger the margin for error.  As it turns out, visualizing the aiming point for each of these three angles is fairly simple:  for cuts to the left, the left edge of the cueball hits one of three spots - the base of the object ball (30 degrees), the "left quarter" of the object ball (15 degrees), or the "right quarter" of the object ball (45 degrees).  For cuts to the right, match the right edge of the cue ball with the same three points on the object ball.  As mentioned, any cuts thinner than about 50 degrees cannot use these three points...though the article that I read mentioned that you should be able to bank the ball somewhere based on these three angles.  I have not tested that part much.

The next question, of course, is "How do you determine the angle when you are at the table?".  It would be bad form (and likely illegal) to measure with a protractor or compass when you are playing a match, so how do you easily determine the angle of the cut so you know which aiming point to use?  It turns out that, for most people, the angle between the index and middle finger when the fingers are splayed out is very close to 30 degrees,  45 degrees can be approximated by bisecting a right angle.  15 degrees is a bit tougher, but I figure that anything that is significantly lower than 30 degrees (using my fingers as the guide) can be made with the 15-degree shot.

I still kept the CTE method that Andy showed me in the back of my mind, as the man who invented the system I was now using (Hal Houle) also invented CTE.  I kept reading things about it and tried to understand how it worked...

Revamping my pool game

Recently, I started playing pool a lot more and realized that I was at a plateau.  I could shoot okay, but I was not getting any better with practice.  I decided to take some lessons with a pool teacher.

Luckily, there is a very good pool teacher in New Hampshire.  Ken Tewksbury has been a pool instructor for many years (trivia note:  His son Bob spent many years as a Major League pitcher), and I went to him for three lessons this past Spring.  While some of the things he tried to teach me did not take (the aiming system he teaches for shots messed me up for a while until I remembered that aiming shots was not really my problem to begin with), his tips on position play - once I internalized them and figured them out a bit - helped a lot. 

One of the tips Ken gave me was something that I never would have figured out on my own.  I am a tall person (about 6'6", or 2 meters), and I have two normal-sized pool cues.  One of my cues has a nylon (or maybe linen - not really sure) "wrap" around the area where a player's back hand would grip the back of the cue.  All my (pool-playing) life I have used the wrap location as a guide for where I should place my hand...and it turns out that, for me, the wrap is in the wrong place!  
There are two corrections for this issue.  One is to get a longer cue, which they do make - I never knew that either - but the more reasonable correction is to place my back hand in back of the wrapped area on the cue.  Basically, the place to put the back hand is where, when the cue hits the cue ball, the arm (from the elbow to the hand on the cue) points straight down at the floor.  Obviously on some shots this cannot happen, but on most shots where you can stand the way that you want to, you should put the hand in that location.

By gripping the cue where I HAD been gripping it, I was elevating my cue as it moved forward to hit the cue ball.  This drastically increased the error involved in the shot itself, as I was not really hitting the cue ball where I was aiming.

Of course, with practice you can compensate for almost any bad habit.  When I was really in practice, in Chicago, I was able to shoot well despite this flaw, but getting rid of it is bound to help me.  It does mean, though, that I have to train my body once again to execute a shot correctly, and I spent quite a while on the "one step back" before I started taking the "two steps forward".  I have even started using my older cue more often, because it has the wrap on it and it is easier to figure out where to place my hand - right behind the wrap.  My newer cue, which I had been using pretty exclusively for years, does not have a wrap on it.