Ready To Score
Planning to achieve “dead stroke”, where the player makes mental pool choices and physical pool movements with optimum results and with minimal effort, is made simple when your body and mind are set for billiards even before you bend to stroke the cue stick.
Certain thoughts prevail in any pro’s mind when they play their best. I’ll share with you one of my dead stroke keys for you to ponder. Soon, you’ll be questing in the enchanted land of dead stroke more often than you do now.
My body and stance for pool strokes are, like Goldilocks’ porridge, “just right” when I am playing my very best. You are also likely to feel right before you ever stroke right. Neither of us are likely to “shoot the lights out” at the table standing on one leg only or with the cue constantly behind our backs for shots.
Here’s a great way to put your stance to the test and learn if you are ready to proceed to great billiards—the intermediate should be able to sink their cue ball in a pocket of choice by setting towards the pocket, than closing their eyes during the final stroke.
When one’s stance feels secure even before one’s stroke, this procedure takes just a few moments. The cue ball can be sunk without aiming directly on the cue ball and without many practice strokes or anxiety over aim with the eyes. Bend down, take a mere glance at the pocket, then fire the ball into the hole.
Using my recommendations for stance here at About.com, one should have simply bent over, sensing mainly that the cue stick is aligned dead center of the cue ball and boom! The stroke is taken and the shot made in a moment.
When I am standing beautifully and comfortably near the table, I sense I can execute any shot I choose with my eyes closed. Your goal is to feel so confident in the stance that any type of stroke may be executed successfully with the eyes shut tight.
Only failing eyesight may retire a pool player, so it is the game for a lifetime. But even what the pro cannot well see, they can still make, and astigmatic and near-sighted pros play well in their later years.
Rather than micro-managing tiny points of contact on balls up to 9 feet distant, they trust their fundamentals (a shooting arm that is on the shot line (as shown here at About.com's Pool & Billiards site) and a body not interfering with shooting arm motion (also within) to deliver the cue ball as intended, every time.
