Curious about pushing the cue through the cue ball

[linglomsri]

As I saw the snooker in super slow motion, I think it's not necessary to push the cue through the cue ball because as you can see CB starts right away your cue tip touch the CB.
I think that if one can timing the CB right(like Ronnie does), it will go as you wish
Am I correct?

You can see from these 2 clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wcB1mHMCzE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF-tJxS-h5E

sorry for my poor english

[cazmac1]

It may be your English but if your saying you don't need a follow through you don't understand the mechanics of the game very well. The follow through, drive or push as you call it is about delivering the cue consistently, smoothly and generating power with little effort.
It has nothing to do with the time the CB is in contact with the tip.

[cazmac1]

It may be your English but if your saying you don't need a follow through you don't understand the mechanics of the game very well. The follow through, drive or push as you call it is about delivering the cue consistently, smoothly and generating power with little effort.
It has nothing to do with the time the CB is in contact with the tip.

[Sidd]

I totally agree with you cazmac 1. Although it my seem like Ronnie isnt doing so but that is almost impossible that he wouldnt be. Another thing important to be mentioned here is that if one intends to stop the cue on cueball contact then that can only be done by squeezing the grip in order to hold the cue on contact and that will result in accidental side or wrong direction shot. therefore follow through remains important. This is what I am working on thanks to Terry who is working this out with me through his advice.

It is through the right amount of follow through that my shots are improving like I used ot think in order to hit with pace for some shots (even excluding power shots) I need ot bang the cue ball with power however now I am developing a sound technique that enables me to understand the physics of snooker which is that to generate more pace I need more follow through rather than more pace hitting

[Sidd]

And ingromsi I just checked both the videos... in super slow motion all shots showed contain a follow through please check again literally all shots shown in the clips you pasted contain follow through.

[linglomsri]

Thx for the reply, I understand it clearly about pushing through CB. I just curious because of the super slow mo showed that CB started to travel right away the tip touched CB.

One more question, I myself have very short follow through so does it effect much between having short follow and long follow through
Thx

[Terry Davidson]

linglomsri:

The amount of follow-through you can achieve is governed by the distance you have between the front of the grip hand and the chest when you are in the address position. This amount can be increased a bit by dropping the elbow at the end of the delivery but with most people the average is around 6inches or so although some good players drop the elbow even more on power shots and will achieve around 8-9inches of follow-through.

If you have let's say 5inches between the front of the grip hand and the chest when in the address position and then when you deliver the cue you only follow through say 3-4inches, even on a power shot, then you are doing what's called 'clutching' the cue or in other words decelerating through the cueball. This is very bad and very counter-productive to delivering the cue consistently straight.

Here is the best advice I can give to any player --- ALWAYS DRIVE THE GRIP HAND THROUGH TO THE CHEST ON EVERY SHOT --- This allows the player's body to complete the delivery of the cue in a consistent manner but more importantly has the cue ACCELERATING THROUGH AND BEYOND THE CUEBALL.

To achieve this the player must learn to NOT TIGHTEN THE GRIP ON THE BUTT OF THE CUE UNTIL THE CUEBALL HAS BEEN STRUCK.

There is no other way to play this game well however there are good players that have shorter follow-throughs, like for instance Graeme Dott, BUT the absolute best players like ROS, Higgins, Selby, Muphy, Maguire, Hendry, Davis (both Steve and Joe), etc., etc. ALL have good follow-through of 6inches or more and if you think a bit about it there must be some reason they are (or were) excellent players and follow-through is one of the most important reasons

Terry

[linglomsri]

Thx for good advise Terry, really appreciated

[CoachGavin]

Just a point Terry. If a player has 6 inches from the front of their grip to their chest then they are only going to follow through 4 inches as you have to remember that the cue ball is a couple of inches thick. Are you counting the follow through as the distance past the cue ball or including it? What would be your minimum follow through distance if the player always finished at their chest - for instance I have a friend who has his grip in the vertical position but his grip is only 5 inches from his chest so that by the time he has followed through he is only getting 2/3 inches past the white.

[Terry Davidson]

Gavin:

I'm not sure I'm really following your point as it seems to me it's just a matter of semantics. The amount of follow-through would be measured from when the tip first contacts the cueball and it takes off, surely? I've never seen or heard of anyone subtracting the 2" diameter of the cueball from the amount of follow through a player is able to achieve.

However, the actual method a coach uses to measure follow through is not important. What is important is that the player should accelerate through and beyond the cueball, maintaining the acceleration until the grip hand thumb hits the chest.

If you normally subtract the diameter of the cueball then you may confuse some players since the most common terminology for follow through is the distance between the chest and the front of the grip hand at address, which in most players would be anywhere from 4.5" to 6.5". Players who have the cue more to the outside of the chest or more under their armpit may be able to get a bit more and also you can increase the amount of follow through a bit by dropping the elbow.

Both Nic Barrow and Terry Griffiths measure follow through from the back of the cueball and do not subtract the diameter of the cueball from that amount. Anywhere from 4.5" to 7.5" is considered good but even if a player only follows through say 3.5" as long as he accelerated until the hand hits the chest he would be fine as he is completing the stroke, hopefully smoothly.

Terry

[CoachGavin]

It was more for the benefit of clarity than anything else. In my opinion I would say that the follow through should be at least five inches. players not getting through this much tend to hit at the ball rather than stroke through it. Thats just from my experience.

[ak615]

Hi Terry,

I always confuse the point that you said "NOT TIGHTEN THE GRIP ON THE BUTT OF THE CUE UNTIL THE CUEBALL HAS BEEN STRUCK". Do you mean the action of loose grip need to be remained during the swing including the rear paue? And only grap the cue back when the action of delivery is completed?

My coach told me that I should hold the cue with all fingers of my grip hand, and the position between the thumb and forefinger (we call tiger's mouth in Chinese) of the grip hand should press on the cue at the stage of rear pause, and relase the cue when delivery. My coach told that the advantage to hold the cue a bit tight is to control the proportion of back swing in order to control the stroking power.

Personally thought is that if I hold the cue too loose, I can feel my cue is not securely on a straight line during the swing and even the delivery and also appear unwilling wrist twist when delivery, but this can give more cue power. If I use the method of my coach, I would say yes, this method can make me easily to control my back swing and straightly deliver the cue, it obvious can improve my accuracy but the cue power is decrease, i.e. the result of screw back and top spin become dull, feeling not natural and smooth when delivery, may be I am still not get used to this new cue delivery method.

So now I am so confuse between your method and my coach method. I found both have advantage for me, so Terry, could you please help me to get rid of my confusion. Thank you so much.

[nrage]

@ak615 I believe the tiger's mouth should remain in contact with the cue for the entire delivery, from address position, through feathers, to pull-back and final delivery. When Terry gave me some coaching he explained that the 'grip' should be loose, but the 1st and perhaps 2nd fingers should remain in contact with the cue with no gaps the whole time. The key is that you're not tightening things more on the delivery, as any tightness will slow the cue down and push it off line.

I wonder if when you're holding the cue loosely, you're also relaxing the wrist, elbow, or other parts of your cue action. This is not what you want, you want only the grip hand itself to be loose, but the wrist should be as firm as your coach has recommended. And, by 'loose' what is meant is that your hand encloses the cue without putting any extra pressure on it. Almost like the cue is just lying on the fingers (but with no gaps around it).

[merlin1234]

Just to get back to the misconception in the OP, the follow though isn't supposed to have some a direct effect on the cueball - clearly if your stroke could act on an object it is no longer in contact with that would be pretty magical. Rather, the follow through is the direct result of a smoothly delivered stroke.

It's probably easier to think about this w/r to golf or baseball. There's simply no way you could hit good golf shots without a proper follow through ; in order to hit the ball correctly you require the club to be travelling at a speed and along a path at the the moment of contact which naturally terminates in the conventional follow through. If you're not following follow through then your club cannot have had the required velocity at point of contact.

[Terry Davidson]

ak615:

First of all you have to know the correct grip pressure. I have explained it on here and so has nrage but here it is again.

If you grip the cue as you normally would (when standing up) then grasp the shaft with the other hand, you should be able to EASILY slide the butt of the cue in and out of the grip hand with NO resistance. If we go back to long ago and the first snooker book by Joe Davis he says in there the cue butt rests on the middle pads of the 4 fingers and the thumb is just there to hold it in the bed of the 4 fingers.

In addition to this, which Joe didn't explain clearly, the thumb should be pointed STRAIGHT DOWN to the floor in a vertical position and should be straight itself and NOT exerting any pressure. The wrist should be kept still although the angle between wrist and cue butt will change as you draw the cue back and forth.

Now to your problem with confusion with what your coach is telling you and what I'm saying. First of all remember this...the forefinger is the main initiator of any movement of the cue, in other words the backswing and delivery of the cue is started with the forefinger. The cue butt should be up inside the forefinger and thumb top joints (part closest to hand) with no gap between the butt and the web of skin between forefinger and thumb. You should only apply sufficient pressure to have positive control of the cue butt and this is VERY light and only comes into play at the very start of the delivery, where your back 3 fingers will be just making contact with the butt and the back of the palm is well off the butt.

Now here is the important part of all of this...keep the grip relaxed until you strike the cueball and no matter how you do that is not important as long as you are able to do it. Keeping the backswing absolutely straight is also important so if you find you have to apply a bit more pressure with the top of the thumb and forefinger by squeezing the butt a bit that is not (or at least should not) be a problem AS LONG AS EVERYTHING REMAINS STRAIGHT and you feel you have positive control of the cue which you MUST have already if you are straight in the backswing.

Think of the cue delivery as very similar to a golfer, who is told over and over by his golf pro to hold the club LOOSELY in the grip of the two hands and to keep the grip loose throughout the swing and also (at least when hitting a normal club in the fairway) the club ends up wrapped around their necks and pointed in the opposite direction from the target. This is the necessary follow-through required for golf and it's identical in snooker. You must maintain the relaxed grip until just a bit after the time of strike.

This is really helped by having a longer backswing but it's not absolutely necessary as long as a player drives the grip hand through to the chest on every shot. A longer backswing means a player has built up sufficient acceleration in the cue so he doesn't want to unconciously tighten the grip of the cue in order to get that extra acceleration required for the power he wants.

Take a really good look at either ROS or Higgins (especially Higgins) for backswing length and relaxed grip through the stoke.

Terry