Proper way to increase cue power

[jim evans]

jim:

Mentally try and hit the object ball with the tip (unless the balls are too close together) or try conciously driving the grip hand through to the chest when practicing (if you have time to practice with all those cues you're making for me!)

Terry

hi terry i started hitting my chest on follow through still not working as i think it should ime proberbly decreasing instead of increasing speed i had the same problem at golf

[Terry Davidson]

jim:

Oddly enough (or maybe not so odd) is my biggest problem has been learning to accelerate through the cueball consistently AND when I played golf my biggest problem was completing the follow-through. It seems my brain is probably programmed to think 'well, I've hit the ball so the job is done' but of course it isn't in either sport.

To play good snooker or golf a player has to learn the club or cue MUST be accelerating through the ball which means you shouldn't start slowing the club/cue down until well AFTER it contacts the ball.

I'm still working on this and I STILL HAVEN'T GOT IT (dammit) and my own belief for myself is I really haven't developed a grip on the cue which will naturally allow me to do this consistently. What I've found is a longer backswing generally helps, however there's a problem there too, as the backswing has to be perfectly straight and the best way to achieve that is to have a loose grip and very slow backswing, ideally with a nice little rear pause.

I just had a really bad day playing one of my firends (who''s pretty decent) and lost 10-4 whereas I played him a week before and won 8-3 so INCONSISTENT (yet again). I don't think I had a 40 break in the second session and was missing sitters. As I'm supposed to be a damn MASTER COACH you'd think I could sort this out but it wasn't until after we stopped for the day that I was able to get on the table by myself and discovered I had reverted to not driving through the cueball.

I may be forced to try hypnosis next although I'm really working hard on imagining driving the tip through to strike the object ball and keeping the grip loose until after contact. It helps but it's a long learning process. The other really frustrating fact is when I played full-time in the 80's I never had this problem and long potting was my strong point whereas now it's my weak point.

Terry

[throtts]

Hi Terry,

I remember going to see my first pro snooker final, it was The Masters at the Wembley Conference Centre. The first thing I noticed because it was so blatant was how much they DO NOT punch the cue ball hard. It was Hunter v Ronnie and Hunter was on the yellow 1/2 ball, he needed to get back up to the reds around the black, well I sat thinking he was going to wallop this one but he simply did not, he just almost caressed the yellow in and still got back up towards the reds. This is obviously due to the excessive follow through the pros have and Ronnie is the master of it. Hunters yellow looked so smooth with no effort at all.

So yes, you are correct and I have stated before that so many of us think we are getting through the cue ball when we are not. It sounds easy to rectify but obviously and weirdly it's not...