Klatt Cinches 30K Qualifier

Klatt Cinches 30K Qualifier

Canadian 30K Tour / Newmarket, ONT
by Willy Hermosa
The second qualifier held at Bigwigs in Newmarket, ONT, the weekend of August 11-12 brought players out of the sun to take advantage of this two-for-one stop. This qualifier counted as two stops, helping players lower their penalties. The gathering was mid-range in handicaps with Jason Klatt, Erik Hjorleifson being the top guns.
The match for the hot seat had Klatt versus Ryan James. Klatt put it away quickly, sending James to grind it out on the one-loss side. On the top of the west side, Brad Lucas defeated Hal Borchardt, while Hjorleifson defeated Randy Fawcett on the bottom bracket. In the next match, Lucas was triumphant over Hjorleifson, defeating him 5-6 and sending “Big Red” home with fourth place. James made quick work of Lucas, earning his passage back to the Promised Land. But the finals can only go to one player, and Klatt had his name written all over it. He steamrolled over James, winning the second qualifier.
Results:
1st Jason Klatt
2nd Ryan James
3rd Brad Lucas
4th Erik Hjorliefson
5th Hal Borchardt
Randy Fawcett

is this you, Jesus?

We’ll know He’s back when He claims His holy profile on spock.com. (Or, if you know Jesus of Nazareth, you can invite Him.)

In other news, Spock does not let you search people whose names contain accented letters.
Example: as of the writing of this post, you can’t find Gérard Depardieu, even though his profile exists.

So, if Jesus comes back, it would be nice of Him to miraculously fix this issue: in the year 2007, developers still fail at handling non-ASCII characters.

Another Look at Control

It has been said that the winner of a match is often determined before a single shot is even taken. Most serious players, if they are honest about their losses, will agree, at least partially, with that statement. Obviously, if one player is vastly superior in skill and execution over the other, he will win. If both are equally skilled but one has more experience, then he will win in most cases. If both players are close in skill and experience, then the one who has the greatest intention to win is the favored player.

The front part of a match and the front part of each game are the main battlefields for advanced players. Good players know how to keep control of the table if they get it and that makes the front game a fight for control. The very worst mistake to make in the beginning of a contest is to try something that fails and gives control of the table to your opponent. If you are playing a weaker player, the penalty is not as severe—you will get another chance because your opponent doesn’t know how to keep control of the playing field. He will eventually attempt something and fail.

Taking and keeping control of a match is almost entirely a function of shot selection, skill of execution, and self-knowledge. When you bet everything on a shot that you don’t make, you’re operating from false confidence, arrogance, and failing to consider the ramifications of missing. It takes honesty to listen to yourself about a specific shot and to accept and act on that feedback. Proceeding ahead with disregard when you have doubts is never an act of courage. It’s an act of surrendering to the psychological pressure of competition.

In pool, competition is between two people. It can look many different ways, but it is essentially a confrontational experience. Although many purists wish it to be, it is not simply an unadulterated contest of skill. You have to rely on your skills, of course, but the effectiveness of how you employ them is greatly determined by the tenacity and will you put behind it. If you really mean to win when you draw a strong player, you will not attempt shots in the front game where you cannot guarantee the outcome. The penalty is just too great.

Although we can always see the final outcome on the table in terms of shots made and missed, the actual measuring of one’s intention happens in the psychological grabbling between two competitors. When two advanced players meet on the playing field, one player, at some point, concedes defeat to the other.
At the Derby City, I watched a 9-ball match between Earl Strickland and Derek Pogirski of Ann Arbor, MI. Pogirski was not the favored player, but he had a two- or three-game lead and was fully in control of the momentum of the match. Strickland went into his famous “angry and intense” mode and scattered the last three balls of the rack, conceding the game, which was a foul under the rules of the tournament. To my surprise, Pogirski did not call the foul and take the extra game, even though it would have put him on the hill.

I mentioned it to a friend, and he said sarcastically, “Those rules don’t apply to Earl.” I realized that in the moment of not holding his opponent to the rules of the tournament, Pogirski had deferred to him and, at some level, had conceded the match. Sure enough, Strickland took control and went on to win, at which point I turned to my friend and said, “If he ever does that with me, I’m gonna call the foul on him.”
Ah, but the human mind is such an insidious thing. A few minutes later, I got called to a match with Danny “Kid Delicious” Basavich. He challenged the rack repeatedly, and I re-racked more than I should have. Instead of telling him to accept it or get a referee, I allowed him to rack his own. At one point he moved to tap the balls into place, and before the cue ball landed, I said strongly, “Don’t tap those balls!”

He tapped three or four into place, removed the rack, and went to the head of the table. Even though tapping balls was a foul under tournament rules, I didn’t call the foul and take the one-game penalty. I never even realized, until several minutes after the match was over and after a painful walk in the parking lot, that I had conceded the match to him in that moment. Like they say, sometimes the winner of a contest is determined long before the game is over.

Another Look at Control

It has been said that the winner of a match is often determined before a single shot is even taken. Most serious players, if they are honest about their losses, will agree, at least partially, with that statement. Obviously, if one player is vastly superior in skill and execution over the other, he will win. If both are equally skilled but one has more experience, then he will win in most cases. If both players are close in skill and experience, then the one who has the greatest intention to win is the favored player.
The front part of a match and the front part of each game are the main battlefields for advanced players. Good players know how to keep control of the table if they get it and that makes the front game a fight for control. The very worst mistake to make in the beginning of a contest is to try something that fails and gives control of the table to your opponent. If you are playing a weaker player, the penalty is not as severe—you will get another chance because your opponent doesn’t know how to keep control of the playing field. He will eventually attempt something and fail.
Taking and keeping control of a match is almost entirely a function of shot selection, skill of execution, and self-knowledge. When you bet everything on a shot that you don’t make, you’re operating from false confidence, arrogance, and failing to consider the ramifications of missing. It takes honesty to listen to yourself about a specific shot and to accept and act on that feedback. Proceeding ahead with disregard when you have doubts is never an act of courage. It’s an act of surrendering to the psychological pressure of competition.
In pool, competition is between two people. It can look many different ways, but it is essentially a confrontational experience. Although many purists wish it to be, it is not simply an unadulterated contest of skill. You have to rely on your skills, of course, but the effectiveness of how you employ them is greatly determined by the tenacity and will you put behind it. If you really mean to win when you draw a strong player, you will not attempt shots in the front game where you cannot guarantee the outcome. The penalty is just too great.
Although we can always see the final outcome on the table in terms of shots made and missed, the actual measuring of one’s intention happens in the psychological grabbling between two competitors. When two advanced players meet on the playing field, one player, at some point, concedes defeat to the other.
At the Derby City, I watched a 9-ball match between Earl Strickland and Derek Pogirski of Ann Arbor, MI. Pogirski was not the favored player, but he had a two- or three-game lead and was fully in control of the momentum of the match. Strickland went into his famous “angry and intense” mode and scattered the last three balls of the rack, conceding the game, which was a foul under the rules of the tournament. To my surprise, Pogirski did not call the foul and take the extra game, even though it would have put him on the hill.
I mentioned it to a friend, and he said sarcastically, “Those rules don’t apply to Earl.” I realized that in the moment of not holding his opponent to the rules of the tournament, Pogirski had deferred to him and, at some level, had conceded the match. Sure enough, Strickland took control and went on to win, at which point I turned to my friend and said, “If he ever does that with me, I’m gonna call the foul on him.”
Ah, but the human mind is such an insidious thing. A few minutes later, I got called to a match with Danny “Kid Delicious” Basavich. He challenged the rack repeatedly, and I re-racked more than I should have. Instead of telling him to accept it or get a referee, I allowed him to rack his own. At one point he moved to tap the balls into place, and before the cue ball landed, I said strongly, “Don’t tap those balls!”
He tapped three or four into place, removed the rack, and went to the head of the table. Even though tapping balls was a foul under tournament rules, I didn’t call the foul and take the one-game penalty. I never even realized, until several minutes after the match was over and after a painful walk in the parking lot, that I had conceded the match to him in that moment. Like they say, sometimes the winner of a contest is determined long before the game is over.

Chalk It Up!

Pool is an amazing game because you have to let go and stay grounded at the same time. Similarly, you have to see what you want in your imagination and then allow your body to produce it in the real world. Before this happens, you have to decide what it is you are going to do, and most important of all, you have to definitely and completely commit to that course of action.
If you move while your mind is still weighing options, you will flounder. If you start while you are still creating the mental image, you will fail. If you begin with the tiniest doubtful thought or the faintest negative image in your consciousness, you will reap what you sow.
In other words, it is crucial that your transition from left brain to right brain, from thinking to acting, from mental to physical, and from preparation to execution be as crisp and complete as possible. You don’t want any bleeding around the edges. You want it as real as a rock climber moving from one handhold to another. No guess work, no hesitation, no doubt. Just committed action.
There is a trick that many good players use to facilitate this transition. They use the chalk. That’s right … that little cube of blue stuff that so many of us take for granted. Think about it. Chalk is the perfect physical object to use to signal a shift from preparation to execution. After all, you’re already using it to prepare your cue tip.
You can use it to put your mind in order at the same time. Keep it in your hand while contemplating the table situation. Apply it to the tip as you decide what to do and continue to hold it in your hand as you visualize the desired outcome. Use the act of putting the chalk back on the table or back into your pocket to send a signal to your nervous system. “I am done with thinking … I have decided exactly what to do … I am one-hundred percent committed … It is time to act.” Then set the chalk down, address the shot in a highly focused manner, and let your body take you down.
You could use a thought to mark this transition, but because the chalk is physical it keeps you grounded. It makes the move more real, and since you have to set it aside, it clearly indicates that you are also relinquishing the opportunity for further mental debate. In addition, if you build this pattern into your routine, you will never miscue for lack of chalking.
There are other ways to use the chalk. One technique I mentioned in The Pro Book is for recovering from a distraction. Think of the last tennis match you saw on television. Did you ever notice how tennis players are always looking at their fingertips through the weave of the racket—particularly after they have failed to return a shot? They focus intently on their fingertips, and if you look closely, you can see that they are highly focused mentally too. Have you ever wondered what they are saying to themselves?
You can translate this technique to pool. Whenever you get distracted, just focus intently on the cue tip as you deliberately lay each stroke of chalk onto the leather. Watch the blue grains of chalk as they adhere to the surface. Find some words you like that help you focus and say them in time with the strokes. Once you are back into the groove, move into your normal shot routine.
There’s another chalking technique that many players use. They switch hands to chalk the cue. They pass the cue stick from the stroking hand to the bridge hand and apply the chalk to the tip with the gripping hand. At first glance, it seems like a waste of effort. After all, it would be more efficient to keep the cue in the stroking hand and lay the chalk down with the free hand. Then you wouldn’t have to keep switching back and forth.
But something else is happening here. They are using the chalking routine to maintain the sensitivity of the stroking hand and arm. Every time the shooting hand passes the cue stick, it relinquishes the weight. Every time it takes it back, it recognizes the weight, heft, and balance all over again. It’s like rebooting a computer. Muscles tire when subjected to ongoing action, and tired muscles lose sensitivity. Provide them with opportunities to recover, and they will serve you well.
So give that little cube the respect it deserves. Chalk up to prepare, chalk up to focus, and chalk down to move into action. And if these tips help you win a few more games, don’t feel any pity for your opponent. Let them chalk it up to experience. Good luck good shootin’!

Get Down to Stay Down

So far in this column, we have looked at four phases of the shot process: the standing address, the transition, the set-up, and the execution. There is one last step, and it is there that the learning happens. It is the place where every fine performance gets nailed down.
It is also probably the first place your game breaks apart under pressure. In your climb to the top of a match, it is probably the first place your fingers start to lose their grasp. It is where tension, doubt, and fear first reveal their ugly little faces.
I call this phase of the shot process the stay down. I like to think of it as a thing rather than an act because that seems to make it more real and substantial. It’s not a matter of degrees, but one of reality. It’s like the old joke about being pregnant—you either are or you aren’t. If you think about the stay down as an act, as in staying down, that opens up the whole issue of whether you stayed down long enough or far enough. “I thought I was staying down” is a familiar response to friends who tell a player he was jumping up on the shot during a match.
So what is it about this part of the process that makes it so slippery? Why is it so difficult to master? Most players work hard on staying down and still jump up under pressure. They have tried all kinds of methods to train themselves. They have counted to four after the object ball drops. They have chanted instructions to themselves while down on the shot—stay down … stay down …stay down. Some have even tried the famous two-by-four method, which involves a friend, a hunk of lumber, and a certain degree of masochism. All of these methods work, of course, but only when you’re doing them.
You’ve probably heard explanations of why people jump up on the shot. An engineer might say it’s easier to get up when you use the centrifugal force of your moving arm to start the action. A psychologist might say that since you visualize while standing, there’s an urge to rise to see what happened. A coach might say you’re coming up because your stance is wobbly. A stake player might say it’s because you’re scared—that you can’t take the heat. All of these explanations are interesting, but none are especially useful. You could spend a week looking at each one and still have no guarantee that you’ll stay down on the next shot.
I have come to the conclusion that all problems with staying down stem from one single source. The player never really got down in the first place.
Think about it for a moment. If you were fully down physically and mentally, wouldn’t staying down to watch the shot unfold be as natural as eating ice cream? If you were fully in the moment, wouldn’t you just naturally stay there to watch the ball fall into the hole? After all, isn’t that what you’re doing? If you were eating ice cream, would you turn your head away just when you opened your mouth? Of course not—you know you can hit your mouth with a spoon of Hagen Daz. And that brings us back to the conversation about practice and confidence. Good practice creates confidence.
I have a couple of tips that you can use while you’re racking up the practice hours. If you get fully down on the shot physically, your weight will fall to your feet. You can feel the contact between the bottom of your feet and the floor. The more balanced that weight is relative to the bony structure of your feet and ankles, the more solidly you will be rooted and the less likely you will come up before the shot is complete.
If you are fully down on the shot mentally, you attention is concentrated on what you are doing. You have an anticipation of seeing the shot unfold from a DOWN perspective, but your attention is not focused on an outcome. You are enjoying the experience as it happens. You are staying down because you got down!
Good luck good shootin’.

Controlling the Arena

In the last column I talked about controlling the table and how a contest between advanced players is essentially one of who will take control. Since both players know how to control the table, the match is often determined by who can take control first.
In pool, the issue of control begins with being able to control the destination of the object ball. A player has to first learn how to make the shots. Once that skill is fundamentally established, however, the issue of control evolves to one of controlling the cue ball. When that ability is essentially mastered, the issue of control moves to controlling the table. Once that concept is understood, a player’s perception of control moves to an even wider and broader framework. He is able to “see” the contest in terms of who is controlling the playing field.
This is a tricky thing to see because the playing field, or arena, as it can also be called, includes more than just the players, the table, and the equipment. It also includes the spectators, the tournament director, the bleachers, the television cameras, and everything else that is part of an event. It includes the expectations of the spectators, the fears and hopes of the players, the clash of destinies, and everything else imaginable.
I know this sounds airy-fairy, but there is truth to it. The arena is not simply a collection of people and things. It is a context. It is the context in which the people and the things show up. It is the context in which the contest takes place. If one can affect the fabric of the context, one can control, to some extent, the outcome of the contest. Instead of being just a participant, the controlling player becomes an author of a happening coming into being. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
At the Glass City Open, Earl Strickland was in a match with Troy Frank, and most of the spectators were watching that match or one of the other three or four taking place. Frank was at the table, in control, when a spectator got up from the front row and hobbled across the room to the concession stand, got a bag of chips, and hurried back. A few minutes later, Frank took the chair and Strickland came to the table. Instead of shooting, he started ranting about potato chips and greasy hands. “Why don’t you go and get yourself some chips?” he directed to Frank. “Why don’t we just pass out chips to everyone?”
He continued for a few minutes until every eye in the place was on him. Even though most people couldn’t make out what he was saying, they were straining to do so. He was pulling the strings like a master puppeteer, like he has successfully done so many times before. The entire arena was responding and reacting to him. He didn’t move to take a shot until Frank was laughing, uneasily, in his chair.
It’s absurd to believe that Strickland, who has dominated the most mentally tough pool players in the world for almost two decades, is so weak that he could be distracted by a bag of potato chips. Even so, almost everyone has an opinion about his outbursts, and most consider them a character fault. But have you ever noticed that he only acts like that when the other player has control of the match? Have you ever noticed how often he ends up with control of the match after such an incident?
There are other ways to affect the context of the arena, and not all of them are considered negative. In the same event, for instance, every game won by Steve McAninch, the local favorite, was received with wild and enthusiastic applause by a large group of spectators. Their activity turned heads and impacted the unfolding of the event. It continued throughout the tournament as McAninch continued to win match after match. Eventually, he defeated Johnny Archer after a confrontation between the two of them forced tournament director Scott Smith to proclaim a non-talking rule. That, by the way, is another example of controlling the playing field.
There is one other kind of control in pool, and I’ll be addressing it in the next column. It’s the one where the most value is realized and maybe the only one that really counts in the final evaluation. It’s called self control.
Good luck good shootin’!

Natural Tempo

Natural tempo is an important part of pool and playing in it is synonymous with being in dead stroke—you can’t have one without the other. Your natural tempo is also unique. You can’t learn it from someone else or fake it or make it up. All you can really do is discover it and empower it.
Everyone plays great on a practice table. It’s easy to get into stroke when there’s no opponent trying to stop you. It’s easy to get the ball rolling when no one is watching and judging your performance. It’s easy to run multiple racks when it doesn’t really count. But it’s harder to do in a competitive match.
Your natural tempo doesn’t require force or perspiration. It doesn’t require a lot of management or control. It does, however, require a certain level of comfort with yourself and your game. You have to be able to allow yourself to move at the speed that lets your body and mind thrive. You have to let go of the obstacles that are in the way. You have to be able to ignore the distractions that come from your opponent and surroundings and the ones inherent in the game itself.
When you are in a match, getting your tempo established and your stroke out is basically a function of confidence. Your stroke is not under the control of your conscious mind. It comes from a deeper place. Anything that forces your consciousness into a reflective, questioning, or “thinking” mode, at least for that moment, steals a bit of your confidence and knocks you out of your natural tempo.
When you don’t know what to do, it can go two ways. You can take a momentary pause as you figure it out, see it almost immediately, and move right back into action. Or you can stand there dumbfounded. You’ve never been in this situation before, and you’d don’t see a decent option. The longer you look, the more everything can get bogged down.
There are two ways to prepare to successfully handle this kind of scenario. Obviously, if you understood every possible situation, you wouldn’t ever confront one where you didn’t know what to do. This is impossible, of course, but it does underscore the importance of practice, study, and experience. Secondly, you could create a routine to guide you through these inevitable moments. Here are some suggestions:
1. Don’t let the physical action come to a complete stop while you figure out what to do. Keep something moving, but don’t get stuck on just one thing. Chalk the cue, walk around the table, etc.

2. Stay focused on the table situation and take your time. If it’s a critical juncture of the match, and you’ve gone through your pre-determined moves more than twice, consider taking a break if you have one available.

3. If you still don’t know what to do, do something simple.
Rushing is also associated with not knowing what to do. You stand there looking at the table without seeing anything promising. You open up your mind for ideas and either get flooded with mental pictures or nothing at all. The longer you stand there, the more the physical action winds down. You can sense the momentum slipping away. Suddenly a clear shot option pops into your mind, and you are so relieved that you jump right down and shoot it without further consideration.
If you were in the comfort of your own home and asked to come up with the best shot for the same situation, you wouldn’t have acted so hastily. You wouldn’t have chopped your decision-making routine short. You would have looked at the shot, imagined it getting played out on the table, and made a judgment call. If you liked the way it looked, you would have committed yourself and moved into your shot process. If you didn’t, you would have discarded it and asked your calm and silent mind for another. When you’re playing inside of your natural tempo, that’s exactly what you do.
Good luck good shootin’!

Killer Instinct

“Killer instinct” is a term tossed around fairly regularly in pool room conversations. It is applied to some players and found absent in others. “He’s got the killer instinct…she doesn’t have a killer instinct,” etc. What, exactly does this term mean? How do you know if you have it or not? Is it a good thing to have, or is it a dinosaur left over from the smoke-filled, trouble-in-River-City poolrooms of the hustlers’ era?

For sure, pool is a one-on-one sport. Two players go into a match, and only one comes out a winner. Only one player gets to move forward on the tournament chart. You could say that the other player, in terms of a pool match, gets killed off, and that points to the essential aspect of competition. Everybody can’t win. If your opponent really wants to win and you really want to win, one of you has to be denied. And that denial, no matter how many mistakes you make, is ultimately delivered by the hand of your opponent. In that respect, pool requires the winner to land a killing blow. He has to squash the other player’s intention and kill off his hope.

There are people who appreciate the beauty and camaraderie of pool and cringe at killer allegory. They would prefer to pretty it up. No killers here, thank you. To them, the outcome of any particular match is just a matter of the best player winning. If one player plays a better game, then he wins; if the other player plays better, then he wins. It’s not a personal thing, for goodness’ sake.

If we were talking about boxing, this issue would be easy to resolve. After all, somebody is likely to get knocked out, maybe even hospitalized. Having a clear and focused killer instinct in a boxing match is clearly a genuine advantage. Only a fool would be there without one. But is boxing so different from pool? Pool players can’t physically touch each other, but aren’t they up to the same thing?

The truth probably leans toward the killer instinct, even though some will not admit it. To such a player, resistance to the phrase killer instinct comes from associating it with undesirable traits such as hatefulness, evil, and disrespect. That player wants to see himself as a good person, intent on pursuing his own goals and not someone who is focused on actively killing off another person’s hopes and dreams. But that perspective denies the real truth of competition. You have to eliminate the other player to claim victory.
There is nothing wrong with having a killer instinct, expressing it in competition, or talking about it in a mature fashion. It’s not something bad. Having a killer instinct doesn’t mean you have to hate your opponent or be mean and surly, and it certainly doesn’t necessitate poor sportsmanship. In fact, the greatest killers in competitive pool are often the most jovial, friendly people you will ever meet. The killer instinct is not demonstrated and revealed by mannerisms but by the underlying intention of the player.

You can like or dislike a particular player, but if you want to play well against them, it’s essential to respect them. Allison Fisher once said it was the most important thing. It’s also natural to feel love and camaraderie for people like yourself who have found a passion for playing pool. None of this, however, needs to interfere with the killer instinct coming to the surface once your match is called. It’s what competition is about, and if you didn’t have it in you, you would not be playing competitively.

All competitive players, in other words, possess a killer instinct, even if they can’t express it powerfully. One has to acknowledge and accept it to express it effectively. Think about yourself as a competitive player and look for it inside. Don’t worry, pool isn’t an existential activity. No one is really going to die. Even if your opponent tells you he needs to win to feed his family, that’s just a bunch of baloney. It’s still your responsibility as a competitor to kill him off as soon as you can. You’re not taking anything away from him, because if he’s not qualified to win, he doesn’t deserve it. He can get a job just like anyone else.
Good luck good shootin’!

Get in Gear!

Sometimes playing pool is like cruising down an interstate. You’ve got your machine in overdrive, and that’s all you need. The hills and turns are gradual and banked, and you don’t need to shift or brake or even slow down. You can engage the cruise control, put a great CD in the player, and lean back in your cushy padded seat and steer.
It would be great if pool were always like that, but it’s not. Pool is more like a country road. Sometimes you hit two-lane blacktop, but a lot of the time you are on gravel or even mud. Sometimes you hit unexpected curves and hills, and sometimes the bridge is washed out and you have to come to a dead stop. Sometimes you have to drive right through the center of town, jogging left and right as the route threads its way through congestion, stopping and starting again and again.
Lucky for you, your car has a transmission so you wouldn’t blow out the engine by overstressing or overheating it. If you have an automatic, it puts you into a low gear at a full stop and shifts you into higher gears after you get going. If you hit a sudden load, like a hill, it downshifts and takes the strain off of the engine.
No matter what gear you are in, however, the motor still works exactly the same. The spark plugs fire and the valves go up and down. Outside the engine compartment, the drive shaft and the wheels continue to turn round and round. The mechanical actions remain the same. Only the gearing in the transmission is different. Oh, but what a different result this change makes in the overall performance.
We’ve been talking about consistency in our examination of the shot process, and I hope I have convinced you of its incredible value. Truly, you cannot play masterful pool unless you have developed the ability to do the same thing over and over. But now that you have that down pat, let’s talk about adapting it to meet the constant and ever-changing flow of challenges at the table.
Forgetting the jump, break, and other specialty shots for now, I suggest you develop three different gears for general play. First gear is for the shots that are difficult to pocket and difficult to control. Think of long shots where you have to get into a small cueball position or jacked-up shots where you have to stop the cueball. I’m talking about shots that already have two strikes against them. In other words, there are two significant things to be concerned about. (If there are three or more significant concerns, forget about it! Do something else!)
Second gear is where most pool is played. Here you have only one significant concern. Either the shot needs precision and the position is easy or it’s the other way around.
Third gear is for the open road. You use it a lot at the end of the game when you’re in stroke and cruising to the finish line. Shift to third gear when it’s easy to pocket the object ball AND get position. This does not mean relaxing your focus or hurrying your physical routine at all. It does not mean getting sloppy.
The engine of your machine is the execution phase of the shot. It always stays the same and keeps your stroke consistent, predictable, and natural. You may have to take off or add a little power from time to time, but it’s always in reference to your normal stroke.
The changes in gearing take place in the preparation of the shot—in the way you visualize and communicate with your body and nervous system and, in some respects, how you get down on the shot. I’m not going to get into specific details in this column, but I address it thoroughly in The Advanced Pro Book, which will be out this year. I have a couple of pointers, however, that should get you started in the right direction.
First of all, some shots require extensive preparation. They are tough and you owe it to your nervous system to give it the detail and time it needs to get ready. Once ready, though, you can proceed normally. Other shots are easy to see and easy to execute. They don’t require a demanding mental preparation.
If you try to force your mind through a rigorous routine when it isn’t required, it will rebel, and your confidence will be negatively impacted. It’s like trying to explain an action in detail to a child when he already knows how to do it. He doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t need or want your nagging interference.
Likewise, if you let your body move forward into the shot without proper preparation, you have also put yourself at risk. You have mismanaged the mind-body relationship and reduced your confidence again. You have asked your nervous system to produce something, but you never showed it exactly what you wanted. You never gave it the time to understand.
Getting back to the automobile metaphor, you asked your machine to climb a hill in third gear, and it couldn’t. If you had downshifted properly, you would have cruised right by the competition. Learn your gears! Keep one eye on the tachometer and learn to shift at the right time. Keep that power flowing smooth and easy. Good luck good shootin’!