The set-up phase of the shot process begins when your hand touches the cloth and is over a split second before you start your final back stroke. When you have developed your game to a high level and are playing your best, it is a natural, automatic, and flowing sequence. It has exquisite rhythm, timing, and smoothness. It exudes confidence and creates positive expectations even on the part of the casual observer.
Many teachers of the game maintain that the duration and movements of the set-up should vary with the difficulty of the shot. An astute examination of the top players in the sport, however, shows this to be false. At the upper levels of pool, the set-up is very close to being the same on each and every shot. The duration, or the time it takes to complete the set-up phase, is the same on a tough shot as it is on a simple shot. The number of practice strokes is roughly the same regardless of whether it is a firm shot, a light shot, or a safety. Indeed, a close look at world-class matches shows that most misses are preceded by a change or hesitation in the set-up routine.
One would think that the set-up is a complicated series of movements, but improvement is essentially an act of simplification. When you have done the necessary training and are playing confidently, it becomes a natural expression of faith in your skills and nervous system. It’s like the twelve-bar blues—simple, but compelling.
Now and then we see a professional player slip into a style where he saws away at the cue ball for a minute and a half before taking the shot. It’s agonizing to watch and is almost always a sign of someone who has recently taken a dive in the ratings or in some other way lost their courage and confidence. Instead of letting their body perform, they try to control it.
Here’s a funny story that illustrates how the set-up reveals the inner state of the player. At the 2003 Glass City Open, I drew Howard Vickery, the current Seniors Point Leader. I had recently won a match from him at one of the Nashville IPC Qualifiers and was determined to win again. He was, of course, equally (or as it turned out, even more so) determined to put me in my place. When the match was over, a colleague of mine, Randy Whitehead, pulled me aside. “Man,” he said, “I’ve never seen you like that before. You looked like you were afraid to shoot.” I paused for a second before realizing what was true about my performance. “Wow,” I blurted out, “I was!”
All that said, the only way to hone your set-up routine is to break it into the essential parts and polish each of those parts until they shine. Then you fit them together into the rhythm and sequence that works best for you and your body. You want to get to where you can trust your body to accomplish the set-up on its own, without your conscious interference. When you can do this on a regular basis, the set-up takes only a short period of time. All you do is settle the body into position, take a handful of practice strokes, make a couple of eye movements, and you’re ready to shoot. Unfortunately, learning to do this well can take a long time.
It’s hard because it’s almost impossible to observe what you are doing when it’s working well. When you try to “grab it,” it slips through your fingers. It’s almost as if the conscious or analytical part of the mind (the observer) takes away from the body’s ability to do what works. It’s a real dilemma and is the main reason so many great players can’t coach. They can get in the “zone,” but they don’t know what they do when they get there. The most consistent players, I believe, are ones who not only can put themselves into the “zone” but also have a pretty good idea of what they are doing mechanically when they are there. They at least know enough to recognize when they begin to stray away from what works best. They are quick to regroup.
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Remembering that most of the preliminary preparation takes place in the standing address, let’s look at the set-up sequence in a logical fashion and see what we can discover. It’s a lot like the scissors, rock, and paper game—something always has to be dominant. For instance, does it make any sense to confirm your final aim if you haven’t confirmed a straight and level stroke yet? Does it make any sense to take your final aim if you haven’t confirmed where the cue tip is going to strike the cue ball? Timing is set by anticipating the impending contact of the cue tip and the surface of cue ball. Can you do that before you confirm where you are going to strike the cue ball?
What about eye movements? Can you confirm where you are striking the cue ball without looking at it? Can you confirm your aim without looking at the object ball? Do you need to look directly at the shaft to guarantee a straight and level stroke or can you pick it up with your peripheral vision? Does it make any sense to try to do any of these things if your body is not fully settled into position? If you are not fully settled into your form, like wax being poured into a mold, how can you be sure you are looking and stroking from the proper perspective?
Write these questions down on paper and figure out what makes sense to you. After you have pondered them for a couple days, get on a practice table with the intention of examining them further. You will benefit from the work. As for me, that’s enough for this column, I’m starting to get dizzy! Good luck & good shootin’!
In the last column we saw that the transition part of the shot process is a brief but crucial element. During this phase, you are moving your body from a standing posture to a lowered one, and you are moving your intention (and your attention) from the mental to the physical. It’s an easy place to fumble or be distracted because most players have not trained themselves to hold to the proper focus during this phase. Let’s look a little deeper.
On one side of the transition, you are looking at the balls on the table and mentally visualizing. You are imagining and assessing different mental pictures. You are creating these pictures and viewing them on an internal mental screen. You are comparing them to other pictures that exist in your mental catalog of shots, and you are looking for the exact image from your past that matches the envisioned outcome that you desire. You are looking for a compatible picture that tells you that your projected stroke and cueing will produce the exact outcome that you want. It’s the pool version of the famous formula: If you see this — and do that — you’ll get this.
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When you recognize the shot immediately, you know exactly what to do and automatically move into position to execute. It takes only a second, and if you only confronted shot situations like this, it would be very easy to get into dead stroke. You would always know what to do and how to do it, and you would execute confidently time after time after time.
It is the shots that require you to make decisions that cause the trouble. Not because your decisions are necessarily faulty or because you can’t execute what you choose, but because the process itself has the tendency to pollute the transition phase. Thoughts and other mental activity tend to spill over into the execution part of the process.
This is a problem because the execution phase is not a mental thing. It is purely physical. All of your mental activity must take place in the standing address. Handle all mental images while standing. Deal with all concerns and doubts while standing. Make all decisions about bridge, cueing, and stroke while standing. Make all conscious adjustments while you are still on your feet.
“Acquire your target” while standing. Set your aim and move your body into position while you are still standing. Assume the same upper body structure that you want to have when you are actually down on the shot. Align your eyes and body to the shot line just like you want them to be when you finally come down on it. Once you commit to an alignment that seems congruent with your mental image of making the shot, don’t change anything. Just come directly down. Use your cue stick to keep you orientated to the shot line and keep your focus on maintaining the correct aim and hit on the object ball. Keep your head in position on the shot line and lower it like an elevator coming down a shaft. Do not allow it to veer to the left or to the right.
On one side of the transition, in other words, you are aware of the table but your attention is focused inwardly. You are essentially dealing with mental images and thoughts. On the other side of the transition, your attention is focused outwardly. You are focused on the physical aspects of the shot.
Here’s another way of looking at it. In the standing address, you are using your mind. In the execution phase, you are using your body. You get in trouble when you’re down on the shot, and your mind is still partially engaged. Please be advised - your mind is a marvelous and necessary part of you, but it can’t execute at all. Your body, on the other hand, is absolutely incredible. It can execute anything you have trained it to do, and it will respond directly to whatever mental image it receives. The only time it fails is when your mind gets in the way and mucks it up.
Work on the transition phase in your practice sessions. Train yourself to shift from the mental to the physical during this part of the shot process. Take your final, committed mental image down with you, but release it about halfway through the transition. Allow it to move to the back of your perceptual awareness, almost as if it was remaining inside the space occupied by your head when you were still standing. By the time your bridge hand hits the cloth you want to be totally in your body, completely free of all mental activity, including visualized images. Trust the instructions you gave to your nervous system with your final visualization and shift your focus to what is in front of you in the real world - the shot at hand. Trust your mind when you’re standing. Trust your body when you’re shooting. Thoughts stay standing. Body comes landing. Mind stands. Body bends.
This is my seventh column on the shot process for InsidePOOL Magazine, and so far we have looked at some very important things. We have examined the standing address in great deal. We have broken the transition phase into minute parts and put it back together. We have analyzed and worked diligently on the set-up phase. Everything we have been looking at contributes to the development of a masterful game, but guess what? None of this stuff matters at all. It doesn’t count.
Preparation in pool is important, but you don’t get any points for it. You only advance in a tournament if you win the match. You only get to mark up another game if you win. In terms of any particular shot, it only counts if you make it. In terms of the shot process then, the only part that really counts is the execution phase.
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By the definition we started with, the execution phase begins with the final backstroke and ends when the final forward stroke is complete. We can break it into parts and polish it until it shines, but in action, the essential success of this phase is affected mostly by what you don’t do, not by what you do. In other words, once you get to the execution phase it’s too late to do anything. It’s too late to change your mind. It’s too late to make an adjustment. It’s too late to change your aim or shift your weight. It’s too late to change the hit on the cue ball or take a little power off. Anything you “do” during this part of the shot process is an error.
Why? Because there’s nothing left to do. Everything has already been prepared and confirmed in an earlier step of the process. No doubt, question, or adjustment can come up in the execution of a shot unless it has been neglected or overlooked earlier. It reminds me of a sales training demonstration I once saw. On a chalkboard, the trainer drew an overhead picture of a hallway with several open doors on both sides. “The customer comes in here,” he said, pointing to one end of the hall, “and the only way out at the other end is for him to buy. You have to close every door as you walk him down the hall and confirm with him that it is shut and locked. If you leave even one door open or unlocked, he’ll be coming back. When he is faced with the fear of making a purchase at the end of the hall, he’ll run back and out that door.”
It’s the same with the execution phase. If you left something unresolved in the address, transition, or set-up parts of the process, it will show up again at the execution. It can cause you to “let up on the stroke.” It can cause you to attempt to “steer” the cue ball, hit it with hesitancy, or over-hit it. Some times you will even scratch or knock the cue ball off the table. Your energy, instead of being focused confidently on a committed and expected outcome, is allowed to run back to that open door and escape. The end result in both of these scenarios, the sales example and the shot, is wasted energy. Nothing constructive is produced. Nothing is forwarded.
In the movie “City Slickers,” Curly’s great advice was, “One thing...just one thing.” What he meant, of course, is that the secret to a successful life is to find out what really matters. For Curly, it was moving cattle, and for the character played by Billy Crystal, it was his family. We can broaden this concept and use to come full circle on this initial examination of the execution phase. Maybe it isn’t really the only part of the process that counts after all. Maybe it’s only the other ducks we lined up that really count. Better yet, maybe it’s just doing one thing at a time that makes the difference.
The set-up phase of the shot process requires rhythm, timing, and smoothness. If you have all three of these, the whole process unfolds in a natural and flowing sequence and you play with confidence and positive expectation.
Timing is the most important of the three. In fact, rhythm is essentially dependent on timing, and smoothness is basically a result of good rhythm. It makes sense then, to have a thorough understanding of timing and to learn how to adjust it when necessary.
When you get into your car and turn on the ignition key, the engine starts as a result of good timing. When you drive to the local poolroom, you get there because of good timing. Every automotive engine has a chain, belt, gear, or something that coordinates when certain mechanical functions happen. If the timing is right, it runs like a charm. If the timing is off, it won’t run at all.
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I don’t know how it is in the era of electronic ignition, but at one time, there was a mark on the flywheel that you had to line up with another mark on the engine block to get the motor running perfectly. You could advance it or retard it a few degrees, but you had to stay within a well-defined range.
The point of this analogy rests with those marks. If you knew where they were and the proper way to line them up, you had total mastery of the whole timing issue. It’s the same in the set-up phase—if you know where the marks are, you’re got the whole thing licked.
The timing marks in the set-up phase of the shot process are obvious but often misjudged or overlooked. They are the outer surface of the cue ball and the outer surface of the cue tip. It is anticipating the contact of the cue tip with the surface of the cue ball that sets the timing.
If you don’t believe this, go to a pool table cold and shoot a dozen shots with your attention on the meeting of these two surfaces. Get to where you can feel the grit, or bite, of the grains of chalk on the surface of the cue ball. You will be amazed how quick it will put you into stroke.
At the U.S. Open, I watched a friend struggle unsuccessfully through a match. It was painful to watch because he used to play very well. He practices for hours a day, keeps himself in good health, and yet is totally frustrated with his game. In fact, it’s been on a downward trend for years.
He’s a senior player, and some people think that’s why his game has deteriorated, but there are a lot of players his age still playing jam up. As far as I can tell, it’s just a matter of timing.
Good players, at some point in the set-up, bring the cue tip close to the cue ball and pause ever so briefly. They are judging the impact of the two surfaces and setting the timing of the stroke. There is a range in which this pause is effective, just like in the automotive example. If you go too close, you touch the cue ball and foul. If you pause too far away, you lose the ability to accurately sense the contact.
My friend was pausing 3 to 4 inches away from the cue ball, which is way too far. I haven’t asked him yet, but I bet he thinks he’s a lot closer. His eyes have changed over the years, as they do for most of us, and are probably the source of the misjudgment. It’s an easy thing to fix, but only if you know it’s off. I hope he reads this column.
Good luck and good shootin’!
The third phase of the shot process is the set-up. It begins the second your hand touches the cloth of the table, and it is over when you start your final backstroke. It is a crucial part of the whole, of course, but not nearly as complicated as most beginning and intermediate players make it.
If you have been following the shot process conversation in this column, you no doubt realize that most of the formative work is done in the first two phases—the standing address and the transition. If that preparation is carried properly forward, then the set-up becomes a natural and duplicable action.
If your mental and alignment preparation is completed in the standing address and maintained throughout the transition, then it is your body and nervous system alone that assumes the set-up. In other words, if you get down and you’re still thinking, you’re in trouble. If you touch down widely out of aim and alignment, you are also in trouble.
That said, let’s take a look at the set-up in terms of components. Lots of things have to happen between the time your hand touches down on the felt and before you actually pull the trigger. You settle your body into your stance; you address the cue ball; you refine your aim; you confirm the straightness and plane of your preliminary strokes; and you set the balance, feel, and timing of your anticipated execution stroke.
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“Hey...wait a moment,” you might say. “That’s a lot of adjusting and calculating going on down there. I need to think just to sort it all out!”
Well, maybe you do when you’re first learning to shoot or when you’re in the practice room honing your routine and training your nervous system. But as you bring your competitive game up, you will eventually hit a plateau and stay there until you learn to allow your body to make these adjustments in an unconscious manner. As long as you are directing your set-up adjustments with conscious thoughts, you’re never going to know your best game. Competitive pool happens in the real world, and, in addition to skill and knowledge, it is a battle of awareness and immediacy. If you’re thinking down on the shots, you’re not working in the present moment. There is a tiny gap between you and the physical world of cloth and balls. You will get beat by more advanced players who let their senses interact directly with the situation.
Let me simplify again. You have to learn to trust your nervous system to do what you trained it to do.
The key words in this statement are “trust” and “trained.” They go together and grow together. The more you train your body to perform consistently, the more you will trust it. The truer and finer you hone your set-up pattern, the more you will trust it, and the easier you will allow it to perform without interference.
Training yourself to perform all the components of the set-up in a refined and consistent manner, then, is the heart of the matter. You want to get to where you are doing the same routine on every shot, where you are never doing too much or too little. It is a mix of feeling, rhythm, stroke pattern, and eye movements. It is about ordering the necessary and eliminating the unnecessary. It’s about producing the highest level of efficiency possible.
In the next column, we’ll get into the meat and potatoes of this training, but until then, let me leave you with the following questions. Of the components listed above, which has to happen first? Which happens second? Are there any other components in this phase of the shot process? You will get a lot of value out of these questions, especially if you ponder them while watching a match video of Earl Strickland, Efren Reyes, or Ralf Souquet. Good luck & good shootin’!
