Cue riding up with follow through

[canuck]

I noticed that many pros move the cue tip in an upwards scooping motion when hitting the cue ball with a lot of follow through. I never used to do that as all tutorials tell you to keep the cue level rather than move it in an upwards motion but that's not what the professional players do! In fact I started emulating what the pros do on long shots and voila it improved my long pots. However, I'm not sure why it made the difference and I'm not sure why no tutorial ever tells you to do this when every pro does it with great success. Not only that they also drop their elbows when doing the follow through. What are your thoughts on this?

[nvedia]

May be you are cueing downwards so when you say you made it upwards, you made it level??

[Forman]

Yeah ive noticed the exact same thing, mainly on screw shots where they will strike the cueball right at the bottom but then the tip comes right up on the follow through and have reacently also started trying to do it myself.
Its made screw and stun shots feel alot smoother and has helped with accuracy but i dont really know why either.
Like you said its definitely odd how none of the coaching books mention it yet from what ive seen most of the pros do it.

[Belloz22]

in my opinion no coaching book is 100% correct, yes there is a "text book technique" and steve davis shows this to great extent, but in my opinion, players should learn to adapt some basic techniques into their own technique, this way the player feels comfortable, but also is having some cotrol over their technique. Many of the professionals today have learnt to adpat their own technique to a good standard, it is actually very hard to find a professional who comforms to a textbook technique. Look at Ray Readon, he severally hurt his shoulder when he was a kid, thus not being able to get his cue arm behind his head, but this never stopped him from winning 6 world championships, he learnt to develop his own personnal technique, likewise joe swail.

You proabably found that when you tried coping the professionals technique and potted better, it was because you believed in yourself that by doing it that way, it must help more, so you had less doubt in yourslef about missing, you just had that belief it would work. That is where many snooker players fall down (me included) you need to believe in your own technique rather than emulate another persons, also as you implement some of the basics into your own technique, you will see an improvment in your game.