Help
Posted 25 February 2009 - 09:29 AM
6 pages 6-17-03, rev 2-25-09, CR Fast Larry Guninger all rights reserved Bpn, czm, upp, rsb.
So much in pool is learned by the method, monkey see, monkey do…
Earl Strickland appears on TV with a very long flowing stroke, and immediately players all over the country begin to copy that method. Kids learning to play tend to copy the stroke of the best player in their room. Too many times, they copy a flawed model. People can reach the top of a game, with a flawed method, and Strickland is such an example.
His stroke is too long, his back arm is cocked out of place, and even his eye is not over the shaft correctly. He is doing everything wrong, but he made it work for him, because he has fantastic talent, and he devoted his entire life to grooving that stroke so it repeats for him. Because it works for Earl, does not mean it will work for you. Don’t get the mistaken opinion I don’t like Earl, I love the guy. I feel he is a fantastic player and world champion. We are friends, he is a great guy, and I am his biggest fan.
In Golf you have, Lee Trevino, with a lousy swing, even re gripping during the down swing. You have Mr. X, Miller Barber, with this big loop at the top of his back Swing a golf teacher almost faints over. Here are two players with serious swing flaws and both are perfect examples of two players who have played the game perfect, at its highest level. Trevino won 6 majors and beat Jack Nicklaus head to head several times. Nobody ever hit the golf ball more pure than Mr. X. Gary Player marveled at Mr. X like the Beatles marveled at Roy Orbison. They both saw total perfection.
Ballard tried in vain to take the loop away from him, but he refused to give it up.
These are players who came up without any formal teaching or training in their early years. Their basics were grooved, and when they found out they were wrong, it was too late to change and why should they, if it’s working for them. Even the great Willie Hoppe freely admitted his sidesaddle stroke was wrong and that nobody should ever copy it.
Hoppe said to use the correct pendulum stroke that is being used today. Hoppe got that sidesaddle stroke because he began play as a baby and it was the only way he could hit a ball standing on an orange crate. By the time he was 12 and got with the world champion Maurice Daly who would teach it all to him, the stroke was grooved, so Daly left it alone. I would have done the same thing.
The key here is to get with a professional teacher when you are a beginner and get your self-video taped. Have him build for you a very compact repeatable swing. If your game is stalled and not going up then you have nothing to lose by going in and having that same pro tear it down & rebuild for you a professional swing & stroke that works. Even if you have been playing for 20 years, if you have never had your game video tapes and taken apart by a pro, what are you waiting for, do it now.
A long back swing is a long stroke. A short back swing is a short stroke. The farther you take it back, usually the harder you hit the ball.
The farther you take it back, the harder it is to gauge and control the speed and where the cue ball ends up at. A long stroke is bad, a short stroke is good.
I am in conflict with what you are seeing on TV, I realize that and I can’t help it if these people don’t know what they are doing. Prove it to your self. Get on the long rail of your pool table, and put your shaft right over the line where the cloth goes under the rail. Now take a very short stroke, keep stroking, keep the shaft stroking directly over that line, exactly on that same line. It is easy to do using a short stroke. Now use a longer one, and it becomes more difficult. Now use the very long one you have been taught, and you can see you are wobbling off of the line.
What you are seeing is a flaw. You are going to have to spend years learning to self compensate for that stroke flaw.
Why? So your computer, brain, does a self correct during the stroke so you can make the shot. Why not just groove the thing perfect in the beginning, then you don’t have to go through all of this pain and agony for 10 years, fighting a bad stroke as most of you do.
All of the old greats of the game, who had all of the really high runs & records, had very short strokes. Ralph Greenleaf was very short, Mosconi was short. Don’t give me that bull Willie was a straight pool player and was shooting shorter softer shots. Willie once ran 12 straight racks of 9 ball with that short stroke and the run was unfinished. The guy he was playing never got to shoot a ball and ran out of money and called off the match. This was on a 9’ table and no player today has matched that run or his 526 balls at straight pool.
The experts agree the greatest 9 ball player of all time was Wimpy, the greatest tournament winner from the Johnston City, Illinois days in the mid 60’s. Luther Lassiter had the shortest stroke you could imagine. It is shorter than Allen Hopkins short jab; in fact, the two strokes are about the same. These two strokes, extremely short produced two of the greatest players of all time. That is my stroke today, a non stroke. Mike Sigel, one of the top 5 greatest players of all time, same stroke. In fact, you can play, with no stroke, just plant, line up, pull back and hit. Most get a rhythm going and it helps them feel the shot doing strokes. You want a short soft stroke for the short easy shot. I very hard fast long stroke for the big force follow that has to go 3 rails and down table and a medium stroke in between. It is a rehearsal of shot to be.
Willie Hoppe was the greatest cueist of all time. He played 3-cushion billiards on a 10’ table. He hit balls bigger and heavier than your smaller cue ball and the cloth he played on back then was twice as slow as the modern billiard cloths are today, Simonis #1 vs. 300. Given all of that, you would have thought Hoppe would some big lumbering long looping stroke like Earl or Busty. Hoppe had the shortest stroke of all of them, it was 5” long. Could that have been the reason, he was the greatest?
The majority of pool players I see are hitting their shots twice as hard as they need to; their strokes are twice as long as they should be.
Their follow through should be twice as long as they now are. They have it all backwards. The balls are round; they will roll and get to the pocket, if you give them a chance to.
Hoppe had this very short 5” stroke, then boom, out came this huge long follow through. This is what I teach, short stroke for accuracy, long follow through for power when you need it.
I have a shaft with marked rings to teach my students what a short stroke is. You use it in order to re-groove a shorter one over a longer one. If you have an old cue you have retired great, mark rings around the shaft and make it your new training stick. If you don’t, contact me. I have a large supply of cues that are just fine and play great, but they have picked up little nicks & dings at shows. Nobody will buy them, so I end up selling them below my cost just to get rid of them. I have a lot of these in the $40 to $80 range. These are nothing more that small blems on most of them. Play with a cue for a few months, and you are going to get a few nicks & blems on yours as well. You can make a deal with your pool hall or bar to buy a used house stick cheap for this same purpose.
Measure from the tip of the shaft back 5”, 7”, 9”, 11”, 14”, 16”, 24”. Get a black permanent marker and draw 6 rings around the shafts at these locations, and write in front of each ring, 5”, 7”, etc, so you will remember what each one is.
Make the ring l/4” wide so you can clearly see it. You could always sand off the rings later.
In Golf, putting is very similar to the stroke in pool. Done correctly, both have the same move & hit through the ball. Both have the same objective to get the ball rolling true with top or over spin on it.
Controlling the speed or where the ball stops is vital in both games. In Golf, you take short swings/strokes then you have a long follow through. That was the way pool players used to do it also, when they knew what they were doing and when they could really play.
Golfers don’t have one putting swing at every shot like pool players do. If it’s a short shot, they use a short swing, medium length shot, their swing gets longer, very long shot, the swing gets longer, and each time, the follow through gets longer. This is how they control the speed of their ball.
In pool I teach you to have & use 4 different lengths of strokes. 5”, 7”, 9”, 11”. The 7 & 9” strokes you use the most. The length of your stroke and normal follow through from that trains your brain and muscle memory so you can now use this method to have a finer control of the roll & distance your cue ball goes to. It only makes common sense.
This will work better than one for all big long looping sloppy strokes. I got this from the greatest pool player of all time, Ralph Greenleaf, he used and taught the 5-7-9” three strokes. Ralph played a soft game, 14.1 straight and 9 ball was unknown and not yet invented in his day. I added the 4th one, 11” because on some power draws and follows at 9 ball you need that length and that power of stroke Ralph never saw.
Let’s now go to work, take the cue and put the shaft in your closed loop bridge and shove the shaft forward until the 5” line or circle around the shaft is under your index finger. That is a 5” bridge, and where you would be when you line up on the cue ball. Now pull the shaft back so the ferrule actually goes almost under your index finger again and almost disappears from view, most good players pull it back this far. There is your proper stroke, now do it over & over several times never pulling it back beyond that 5” ring.
When I show this to most pool players they flip out, and most reject this on the spot as impossible saying they can’t do it. Baloney, they can do it, it feels so bad, because it is 2/3’rd shorter than what they have been using. The power is in the follow through, not in the length of the bridge stroke. The length of the bridge stroke is now only being used to gauge and control your cue ball roll, or the roll of your object ball after it has been struck by the cue ball. They need to spend some time to re learn shorter strokes.
I make the student learn to play with this 5” bridge, just to show him he can and it will work. I prove to him, he no longer needs a foot long stroke, when a shorter one will perform better with greater accuracy. Once he learns that, and has played a few days at home, hitting every shot he faces with this 5” bridge. Now and then you get shots in a cluster of balls where you have to use a 5” bridge in order not to touch the other balls and when that happens you will now not feel uncomfortable. I then let him move up to the next ring the 7”. This is where he is going to hit most of his normal shots. After a few days on this mark, he now can keep hitting on the 7” ring, but on longer shots requiring more force he now can move up the 9” ring.
The longest he should ever consider using is the 11”. This is going to be one of those master blaster table length force follow shots and some monster stroke shot requiring total force and the hell with the accuracy situation.
There you have it, very short or delicate shots, long slow rolls are with the 5” ring, normal shots, medium are with the 7” ring, harder shots are on the 9” ring, and stroke shots are on the 11” ring. The 12” ring is where Earl is hitting every one of his shots and I feel that is wrong. If you could take my head & put it on Earl’s body, he would never ever lose another pool tournament.
In order to control your cue ball, you need to grove the same swing, so it repeats for you. Your cpu, will log in this and repeat it back to you. Your next assignment is to learn how to have the same length of follow through so your cpu can print that move also for you. Once you groove these 3-bridge length set-ups and are making the same exact follow through with each of them, you can retire the marked practice cue. Your computer will now automatically give you the 5 or the 7 or the 9” bridge length that matches the shot, without any conscious thought from you. I can follow through to the joint on a soft stroke; force has nothing to do with this. You need to have a certain bridge length for standard shots, 7” and a standard follow through you memorize. Then you can better calculate the exact force needed to hit a point to get on the next ball.
Your cpu will also make the exact perfect follow through to where the 12-14 or 16” rings were again with out you thinking about it, it is all now automatic and your cue ball control has now gone to a professional level which will simply amaze you.
You play on the 5” ring and on every shot, you follow through so the shaft goes through your fingers & stops on the 12” ring line which is now again under your index finger.
You must groove this move, over & over, until you’re cpu has it down flat. You do the same thing, stroke on the 7” ring, and then follow through to the 14” ring. You stroke on the 9” ring and you follow through to the 16” ring. There is my method, and that is how Willie Hoppe did it, short stroke, long follow through.
Most people out there today have this thing backwards; they are using a long stroke, and a short follow through. Hoppe was right, they are wrong. That is why today, I teach the timeless stroke basics of Hoppe, Mosconi, Greenleaf, the three greatest players of all time. If you do not agree with this method, don’t argue with me, argue with them. Send them an email to poolhallheaven@yahoo.com, don’t send one to me. I don’t want to hear it, because they are right, you are wrong.
I am simply their messenger, don’t shoot the messenger. I only teach what they actually did to win world championships. Argue with them if you do get to heaven. If you do get there, you won’t have too many people to play with; I hear hells packed with all the greatest sticks however. You sure as hell will be able to match up down there.
On the power stroke where you are on the 11” line, your follow through should go past the 16” line and end up between the 16” & 24” rings. I have the longest follow through of any player who has ever lived. I am also regarded as the most powerful pool player on the planet. I own all of the power records in the sport. I own the break records; I was first to hit 10 rails, then 11, then 12. I have dozens of power records no other man can duplicate.
How do I do this, what is my secret. There are many of course, but one of the key secrets is my very long follow through. This is the same vital move every great Tennis or Golfer makes. You must make a long follow through. Other great players in other sports understand this, most pool players don’t. If you do not agree with this, then this is the situation, Hoppe is right, you are wrong, so get used to this.
Pool has been teaching you wrong on a ton of other things as well. If you keep reading my articles, you are going to learn how to perform them correctly for the first time in your life. You will never know if it works, until you try it and give the method a proper amount of time for it to kick in.
I don’t teach this, or encourage my students to do this but I do show them how long I can follow through just to show them it can be done. I follow through to the 24” line a lot, and I teach them to do it also.
No one can even get close when they first try. It is simple I say, just keep going, ignore your old muscle memory which is trying to stop you short, just push past this until you hit the line at 24” then stop on it.
Soon everyone is doing this. I then teach them to make these longer follow through using a variety of forces, very soft, soft, medium, medium hard, hard, and very hard.
I can follow through to the joint and still only roll the object ball a couple of feet. It is learning a new method and feels for the shot, just keep the tip going through the cue ball and well beyond the point of impact.
The entire secret to playing top AAA pool is cue ball control, until you master it you are nothing but a ball banging sausage. When you master it, the game becomes easy, because now all of your shots are short and straight in. Life is now sweet and you are running racks.
You can achieve this cue ball control by practicing 15 hours a day, live in a pool hall with no other life for the next 15 years, then you will groove it.
I would rather you learn smarter than harder by doing it my way, and with my direction & video teachings, get there in 3 to 5 years. Pool takes years to learn, there are no shortcuts. It takes years of hard work and practice. There is no magic pill to buy. If there were one, I would sell it to you.
People say if I follow through to the 16” line or to the 24” line, then I have to drop my elbow and I am told that is bad. My answer is so what, just do it, you won’t be sent to a pool gulag if you do, and it can be our little secret. All the pros do it. Just do not listen to those B** instructors who say not to, those guys do not know squat.
When you are in a position where you have to grip it & rip it, the hell with what the book says, nail the shot with that big follow through, and if the elbow drops, who cares. On many of your shots, the elbow will not drop, so this is simply an example of how to produce a shot out of the box. When I begin to make shots & follow through to the joint most of my students pass out and we have to dump a bucket of water on their heads. I then show them I can follow through past the joint. Go stand behind Mike Massey when he hits any force follow or force big draw and watch his elbow drop. You can not hit the shot any other way.
I can follow through to the wrap if I want to, and do so on the break shot every time.
With a pure perfect stroke you can trust you can now go play some serious pool. Now the game is won and lost between the 6” of your ears. You next master the mental side of the game.
Memorize this and when you need it, recite it to your self in the chair. It will pull you many future victories you would have let slip away.
To become great, you must learn to reach deep down inside to pull out that extra edge it will take for you to win. There is a hero inside you just waiting to be set free who will rise to the occasion and play at a level you have never seen or dreamed possible before. You must summon him, command him to rise and to go win. A true champion digs down inside and pulls up and out the greater you inside.
Crunch time is that point where the winner steps up to the plate and takes charge and vanquishes the loser he is playing. You must dig down deep for that winner inside you and turn him loose. Let him see the finish line, smell the victory, grab the bit in his mouth and run for the roses. Let that big dawg hunt, just get out of his way and follow him home. “FL”
BILLIARD SUPER STORE, lowest prices on pool tables, cues & accessories. We will meet or beat any price on the net. You want it, we have it or we will get it.
www.billiards-superstore.com
TALK POOL, 900 members, polite people, no flame wars or bozos. Contests
Have recently given away free pool tables, cues and Seven thousand dollars of
Pool cues, racks, balls and DVD’s. It’s now the 4th largest site in the USA. These
Two sites, pool chat and FL POOL generate 10,000 hits a week from 37 countries.
www.poolchat.net
POOL SCHOOL. Book a lesson from a touring pro and master level instructor. Bring in a trick shot show by a World Artistic champion. See world class trick shots steam live. Just click the trick shot show tab.
Natural pool, simple techniques, dramatic results. Video taped lesson. You get what you come for or the lesson is free.
THE POWER SOURCE POOL SCHOOL "Fast Larry" Guninger. POOL LESSONS FROM A MASTER LEVEL INSTRUCTOR AND WORLD CHAMPION. 770-381-6609, fax 770-381-1916 web site www.fastlarrypool.com
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA. The total learning center. Explore the Encyclopedia section where there are 226 instruction articles and it’s all free access. Enough pool knowledge to fill 4 full books. Simply click the link, hit enter, hit the tab at the far left which says Encyclopedia, then register free and read and advance your game. Virtually every question you can have is answered there.
www.fastlarrypool.com
TRICK SHOT SHOW. Bring Fast Larry in to perform his mind boggling 100 shots. See him perform the world famous legends show. See the greatest trick shots made that the greatest players performed. Very affordable rates. See the former world champion and Ripley’s believe it or not legend blow your socks off.
Email fastlarry @bellsouth.net fast larry at bell south dot net run those two together. Also use fastlarry @gmail.com
May God bless and peace be with you. May there now be peace between
us. If you are a real pool player, then fast truly loves you. May
the wind be always on your back and all 9 balls fall.
VENI VIDI VICI, OMNIA VINCIT AMOR. "Fastus Maximus. " Latin for
"I came, I saw, I conquered, love conquerors all. Yes I really did
do it all and you can believe it, or not. If you don't believe it,
C'est La Vie. " Shoot straight, innovate, never give up, just run
out on the other guy then there is no way for you to lose.
THE POWER SOURCE POOL SCHOOL GOES ON THE ROAD every year and may be coming to your home town. Check in with us to see if we can save you a trip to Atlanta. You can pick up the current schedule at www.poolchat.net under the forum ask fast larry. Larry’s tour schedule is also posted at www.fastlarrypool.com
Here is the schedule in the first half of 2007.
We present the spring pool schools where you can take your game to that
next level you have dreamed about. Come to our work shop and learn
from a former world champion and master level instructor Fast Larry
Guninger. Two days of intense all day training on the weekend Saturday
and Sunday.
The best price of any school. Only $237 a day, or $29 an hour. The
two day course is $475. No cattle car crowds where you get ignored. We
have the lowest amount of students per instructor of any school.
March 10-12 Philadelphia, Pa
April 14-15 Atlanta, Ga
May 5-6 Washington D.C.
May 26-27 St Pete, Fla
June 16-20 & 24-25 Las Vegas, Nevada
July 7-8 Orlando, Fla
You can have the pool school come to your home room by simply getting
your entire league team to buy in for the 2 day course or get others in
your league or school to take part. You will have to get 5 players
who will put up small advance good faith deposits and then no matter
where you live, Oregon or Maine, we show up. You can now book the pool
school any time between January and July 2007. If you bring in five to the school then your lesson is free and you are the 6th student at no charge.
The pool schools have sold out for the last three years they have been
offered. As the number of students allowed is very small these slots
sell out very fast. Snooze and you lose. You can reserve your spot
today with only an advance deposit of $50 which is totally refunded if
you cancel out within 2 weeks of the school date.
For more details or to sign up and reserve your spot email to:
flenterpri...@bellsouth.net
Flenterprises @bellsouth.net run those two together
You may call 770-381-6609 to discuss it as well.
CLICK THE PIC TO ENLARGE IT
Attached File(s)
-
pool_shot.jpg (37.56K)
Number of downloads: 10
