CUE TIP CONTROL Options

[FASTLARRY]

CUE TIP CONTROL

12-3-09, 2 pages, CR, Fast Larry Guninger, all rights reserved.

All pool players assume they have cue tip control and that it just comes naturally. But if you have not been taught how, it's a good bet you do not have it. The reason the pro has so much control and can produce so much more English is because of his better tip control.

We are going to concentrate here on just learning what to do when the tip makes contact with the cue ball. For this lesson to work, you need to have taken lessons and perfected other parts of your stroke. You need a pro layered tip, filed to a dime shape. I would recommend a Talisman H, or a Moori M.

You need a good cue. You need a good grip. Your follow through is also important so you don't quite on the shot, or jab or poke at the CB. A long smooth follow through will stay on the ball longer and impart more English than a poke stroke. The pro has a very grooved repeating swing and he comes into the ball purer than you do. Being able to repeat the same swing is vital to Pool and Golf. This in turn gives accuracy and confidence. It is compact and simple and operates like a hinge on a door, which always repeats the same door swing.

A bad swing is all over the place, like a fish flopping around. It never sets up in the same place twice. This is why is falls apart so fast under pressure. The first stroke trainer I use is my phone books. Here we see if you can actually hit a point on the CB you aim at. Once the CB has been hit, you really don't know if you did it or not? I take 3 old thick phone books and tape them together with clear packing strapping tape so they are in a block and are heavy enough they won't move when the tip hits them. I take paper stickers which are the size of a dime, come in colors and Office Depot sells them on sheets.

This is actually a fairly generous target to hit. You can almost fit two tips inside one of them side by side. Your aim is to hit the spot, and hopefully in the middle of it. I stick them to the long edge of the books and place them in a sweeping arc so they will represent a very low hit, low, stop shot, center ball, 1 tip above center, 2 tips above center
You take your bridge and begin your strokes and the spots are about 12" away, which would represent a long follow through. You stroke and hit the first sticker and keep your tip on it. You keep doing this until you hit 3 dead center in a row, then move on up to the next one and keep going until you run them all. Many are shocked to find out they are not very good at hitting these and miss many completely. Most are Ok on the low, but very weak on the high points. It shows you how badly you have been missing the points you have been aiming at on the CB and why your shots or your intended English did not happen as planned.

I put the student on a 2nd stroke trainer that only grooves and helps to make his stroke straight. We are trying to learn to stroke, with a little wave action, meaning for power the butt may rise up, but when you go forward to hit, you drop your elbow and shove the cue down the line parallel to the bed. It hits the CB and keeps going down that same line and does not drop. In my stroke, in Hoppe's, Marconi’s & Greenleaf's the tip actually rises up some. There is your power.

But this is only part of the problem. After you learn to hit the spot with your tip, it will still fail, if you grip twists, or you lined up off angle where you are hitting the spot, but not flush, but at an off angle, which will cause unknown and unwanted English on center ball strikes and all kinds of other problems.

You now advance to what I call the Hoppe 101 lag, take a stripe, hit it in the center and lag it up and back down and leave your tip out there so the ball can come back to hit your tip. If your stroke is pure, the table level, this will happen. The stripe in the middle will stay visible. If you twisted or hit across the ball, the stripe will roll over telling you that a problem exists you must find and correct.

I have found in the 3,000 lessons I have given, 99% of those students could not hit the center of the cue ball. Their eyes see it where it is not. Most see this point a little to the right of center. So if your lag keeps coming back right of the center line, it means you are not striking the middle of the CB, but hitting it l/8", 1/16" of an inch to the right. You must trick your body and eyes to learn where true center is. Set up, take aim, then shift left slightly with your shaft until you find center and the CB comes back and hits your tip. Some pros do this and think they are putting inside or reverse English on long straight in shots. They never realized they were now actually hitting the exact center of the CB without knowing it.

Most of you lack power because you hit and glance off the CB. In boxing you throw a punch and he ducks and you hit his head, but the punch slides off with no power or damage. He ducked the punch. In Karate we are taught to hit and drive the punch deep into the body because we have a long straight follow through that never glances off. That is your thought on the CB. To keep the tip on the CB at impact longer than you are doing now. To stop sliding off the CB.
Once you learn this new technique this works great on close up shots which I want to load us using parallel aiming, which will increase deflection, but being close up that does not matter. It will work well with backhand English which I use on longer shots, which naturally hit across the ball, but still stay on the ball longer.

For most of you the problem is you have been glancing off every shot you have ever made. Trying to get you to actually make a correct one is tough. Once you do, then you will have recorded and learned to feel of one that slips off, and the solid feel of one that stays on the ball. I teach this by setting up the 9 rail bank shot, which few of you can make. Most of you can make 5 to 7 rails. I put the CB inside the kitchen, and lay the cue flat on the end rail. The CB is about a foot off to the right of the left long rail. You shoot down table to the farthest diamond, #1, shoot through the diamond and using center ball with a tip of right running, you can make 9 rails by going twice around.
You want to think of driving through, into the cue ball and keep going on that line with no slide off. When it begins to happen, the 7 rail bank becomes 8 and then 9 rails as your power increases. You can then take that concept and put it to work on all your other cue ball shots and impacts. Your power, the amount of English you can now apply, will go up 25 to 50%.

When you are now hitting the cue ball you are making contact and immediately swiping off which is natural for the shaft to do this. I do not allow this and keep driving into the shot. You are on the CB about 1/000th of a second. I am on it much longer. I have been saying for 20 years that I was actually hitting the CB 2 or 3 times on my force follow which is where I get all this power. Everyone laughed and said I was crazy, but when they did the Jacksonville experiment with the world’s fastest camera, it was revealed I was actually doing this. The Cue ball is a heavy rock, it’s not a Tennis or Golf ball which explodes off the hit and fast gets out of the way and down range. In Golf, you will now and then hit a sand shot fat, and TC Chen it, hit the ball twice, which can be seen and is a penalty.
When I hit the CB more than once, or 2 or 3 times, it happens so fast, nobody can see it, so then can't call a foul. There aren’t 10 people in the entire pool world that even knows about this and that it actually exists. You hit the CB, it moves away slowly, then you drive on and catch it from behind a 2nd time, it moves faster and you now push into a third hit and off it races clearing your tip and shaft. It goes boom boom boom all so fast, few of you will ever feel it, like I do.

Perfecting this technique was how I set the world record for the break shot in 1961 making 8 balls on the snap, at both 8 and 9 ball. I was the first person to hit a 10 rail bank, and 11 rail, an 11 rail one handed, and then a 12 rail bank, 2 handed. Staying on the CB was the secret that made all these world records possible and got me on the prime time premier of the Ripley's Believe it or Not show. I have the world records, to back up, what I just taught you.

[Demondrew]

Great information. I'm going to go try the banks and see where I stand.

[FASTLARRY]

Great information. I'm going to go try the banks and see where I stand.

Yes, if you can make-8-9 rails, then you are staying with the CB and on it, if not, then you have a lot to learn. If we go into the entire stroke chain, then this really gets complicated. I am giving you something here, that usually only comes out in all day lessons.

Attached is a diagram of the 9 rail bank, not when I do 11, I just run long and go back down table. Click to enlarge it.

Attached File(s)

 11rails_2.jpg ( 34.52K ) Number of downloads: 4
 01_FL_9ball.JPG ( 1.27MB ) Number of downloads: 1

 

[FASTLARRY]

Come get your power, I have it for you.

Attached File(s)

 cue_thru_ball_explodes_II.jpg ( 14.21K ) Number of downloads: 1

 

[MitchAlsup]

I have been working on controlling my draw. I can draw the CB back as far as 8 diamonds, so my issue is not getting the CB to draw, its about controling how far the CB draws back. When the CB is within 2 diamonds of the OB and when I want to draw it to stop right there or draw back 1 diamond or less, I can place the CB on a pencil eraser. However, when the OB is 3-4 diamonds away, and I want to draw the CB back 3-4 diamonds; I either under hit the draw--comming back short, or overhit the draw--comming back way to far. This has been frustrating.

So, over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that the trick (at lest with my shot) is that you control the speed of the tip at impact independently of the acceleration of the tip at impact to get the CB to do what yo want. {And of course, you have to be placing the tip where you think you are placing the tip; as Larry mentions above.} I have recently found that controling the acceleration of the tip through impact is pretty close to controling the length of the follow through. If you hit the CB at a slow speed, and are accelerating through the tip at impact you will have have a long-ish follow through, and the CB will draw back farther--almost proportionaltly with the length of the follow through. If you shorten the follow through the draw back distance is reduced.

[FASTLARRY]

I have been working on controlling my draw. I can draw the CB back as far as 8 diamonds, so my issue is not getting the CB to draw, its about controling how far the CB draws back. When the CB is within 2 diamonds of the OB and when I want to draw it to stop right there or draw back 1 diamond or less, I can place the CB on a pencil eraser. However, when the OB is 3-4 diamonds away, and I want to draw the CB back 3-4 diamonds; I either under hit the draw--comming back short, or overhit the draw--comming back way to far. This has been frustrating.

So, over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that the trick (at lest with my shot) is that you control the speed of the tip at impact independently of the acceleration of the tip at impact to get the CB to do what yo want. {And of course, you have to be placing the tip where you think you are placing the tip; as Larry mentions above.} I have recently found that controling the acceleration of the tip through impact is pretty close to controling the length of the follow through. If you hit the CB at a slow speed, and are accelerating through the tip at impact you will have have a long-ish follow through, and the CB will draw back farther--almost proportionaltly with the length of the follow through. If you shorten the follow through the draw back distance is reduced.

Yes, excellent comments. Speed control is easier on the follow, because you can mentally see your target. On the draw, you have to stand back, and focus on your target, seeing a spot the size of a dime, and then giving your cpu an order to feel and hit that spot. You need to do drills where you pot and draw back 1' to a dollar bill, then 2-3-4-5-6' and keep doing this until you get the feel of what force a draw back of 3' is.

Greenleaf used his bridge length to control his speed, using a 5-7 and 9" bridge length. I have added a 4th, 11", needed for 9 ball. I teach this in my all day lessons and students have success with it. Few have ever done a 5" bridge which they cant believe, and 7 even seems tight to them. You cant slug the ball because you cant generate the force. My students all have hard down pat, but few have any soft feel. They don't practice it, so they don't have it.