Screwed

[Snookclops]

I have heard you can't screw the distance on a club cloth as you see the pros do on TV.

On a straight black, at best I can screw off the cushion and nearly back as far as the pink spot, but being comfortable I can get it off Cush and halfway between pink spot and Cush.

Roughly this is about 4-5 feet.

Will this be enough to pay to a high standard or do you need to develop this to improve?

[jrc750]

Just keep practicing the shot, but much easier to not leave yourself straight ??

[Snookclops]

I don't understand reactions well enough to avoid this, I can hit an area about 2 foot diameter :-)

[Chappy5]

Everybody wants to screw back like the pros but they are pros for a reason as they have an excellent Cue action/timing and ability to follow through to perfection.

How much you follow through the ball ( with decent power ) and how low you hit it determine how far she will come back but keep your back hand low ( Don't raise elbow ) and the Cue as level as you can with the table or else the chance of miss cue and jumping the White increase dramatically! Many tend to tighten their grip to and this also does not help. Many coaches will talk you through a heap of reasons why you are not generating the screw back you want with most of the points i mentioned above , but there is also other factors like rubbish cloths / heated tables etc that all affect screw back.

[luke-h]

Id still love to see any pro screw the length of a working mans club table with year old 6811 match cloth not looked after.

[vmax4steve]

I have heard you can't screw the distance on a club cloth as you see the pros do on TV.

On a straight black, at best I can screw off the cushion and nearly back as far as the pink spot, but being comfortable I can get it off Cush and halfway between pink spot and Cush.

Roughly this is about 4-5 feet.

Will this be enough to pay to a high standard or do you need to develop this to improve?

You simply don't strike the cue ball low enough, you may think you do but you don't. It's not a question of power but timing and not gripping the cue tightly pre contact with the cue ball so you actually strike the cue ball where you're feathering.
Practise by holding the cue between finger and thumb and accelerate through the cue ball with varying amounts of backswing for how much screw back you require. You should find yourself generating more screw back this way than with your present grip, which will tell you that you simply don't need to hit the ball as hard as you think, you have to hit it low.

Also lower your bridge hand by flattening the palm of your hand to the cloth rather than dip the cue down from your usual bridge height, this helps enormously, especially with those deep little soft screws to hold the cue ball off an angle.

[Byrom]

I think opening post is wrong you can ping it all over with a light white on a club table - I actually think it harder to play with match balls G1s on a slow club table

What better conditions and balls n cloth n steel blocked table does is reduce the need or temptation to over hit and put your arm/shoulder into shots and this leads to all round improvement in technique so you can work on improving your positional play - you stop over hitting things and it can become easier to cue more consistently thro the ball and improve your timing so that you can float balls in at distance just aiming lower without the need to bam bam stun stun if you know what I mean Arry?

I think to improve work on working on the line of the shot - positional play - leaving white angles so you don't have to screw back because you have a little less positional control with screw back than stun with 3 quarter ball etc.

I am predicting you will ignore this learn to screw back like a animal and ping that white around cos everyone does at start - later on you might remember these words.

[ace man]

Sure, striking the ball low enough is #1 priority, and indeed most of us can accomplish this, provided that distance between cue ball and object ball isn't too large, i.e. we feel confident as we have pulled that one many times. If the distance between two balls is great like 2 metres or more, you need to still hit as low as with normal screw shot, but this time with definitely more cue speed, but not too much as that will decrease backspin effect. I very much doubt that many players can do this with any consistency, even under perfect conditions.

Myself I tend to grip too tight too early on those attempted big screw backs, most likely because of fear of miscue. Trying to cue a bit faster than normal, smooth, very low and without any snatching requires a lot of confidence and lots of practise of that particular shot.
Some would say why would you ever need a shot like that? Well, we have seen pro players create a shot to nothing where there was none with big screw. That is a very useful weapon to have.

Guys who have mastered huge screw shots are either super relaxed in both grip hand and in mind by nature, or they have ruined many tips, ferrules and possibly even cloth by practising this over and over again. I suspect a bit of both.
Is this huge screw back worth practising? For club amateur player, probably not.

[jrc750]

I think opening post is wrong you can ping it all over with a light white on a club table - .... .

Yeah but nobody should be playing with a light white at all, pointless !!

[HemiRR]

Deep screw requires superior technique. Former snooker pro Kevin Robitaille (Canadian) is now playing in our senior snooker league (had not played for years and when he last played it was as a pool player) Playing with 141 gr balls and a 12 mm pool cue. he regularly screws back 5 - 6 feet with what seems like an impossibly slow pace on the pot. We all watch those shots and shake our heads. How does he hit it so easy and draw back like that?? Of course the answer is that he has super technique. Of course he can draw back into baulk off the black if needed (but he never seems to be off angle so seldom is that kind of shot necessary).

[itsnoteasy]

I play with premiers (128 g) and TCs (141/142 g) on club cloths and it makes no difference, the TC need better timing to get going but they roll longer once started, the premiers white bounces all over the place as its so light and therefore loses its momentum early, well that's how it feels to me anyway, I have no real evidence to prove this, just how I feel the balls react.
I think the biggest lesson to learn is what was hinted at by HemiRR and that's not to leave yourself straight on the black, makes life so much easier.

[Cannonball]

Practicing Screw:

It's not about hitting it hard but actually that's what you need to do. It's about concentrating on timing and getting through the ball with controlled acceleration. You still need, more than ever, to keep your body still, not use the shoulder. Look at Trump, beautiful timing as INSE points out. Plenty of chalk to avoid miscues, aim at the bottom and play through the ball to leave a slight chalk mark on the deck. Don't forget to pause, then....................accelerate fwd and through the ball. If you time the stroke so that your maximum velocity is at the point of impact, you will achieve maximum power and screw back. It's a good idea to practice this for ten-twenty minutes if you're having problems with screw. Line the balls up down the middle of table and play every one into a pocket with screw only. Don't worry about putting the colours back, just pot em one after the other. You should aim to make the ball travel about 5-6ft, so that you pot the OB and come back off the cushion, 18" into the table, midway between the cushion and OB. And again, and again. In no time, you'll be able to screw two lengths of the table.

INSE: yeah, I had a similar experience at a club that has Premieres. TCs carry more momentum with the extra 12-14g, to overcome the cloth friction. They also overcome air resistance (because of the extra mass) better, air being a major drag on projectiles of all sorts.

[Chappy5]

You simply don't strike the cue ball low enough, you may think you do but you don't. It's not a question of power but timing and not gripping the cue tightly pre contact with the cue ball so you actually strike the cue ball where you're feathering.
Practise by holding the cue between finger and thumb and accelerate through the cue ball with varying amounts of backswing for how much screw back you require. You should find yourself generating more screw back this way than with your present grip, which will tell you that you simply don't need to hit the ball as hard as you think, you have to hit it low.

Also lower your bridge hand by flattening the palm of your hand to the cloth rather than dip the cue down from your usual bridge height, this helps enormously, especially with those deep little soft screws to hold the cue ball off an angle.

Excellent post.

I forgot to mention totally lowering your bridge hand flat to!

[djax]

You simply don't strike the cue ball low enough, you may think you do but you don't. It's not a question of power but timing and not gripping the cue tightly pre contact with the cue ball so you actually strike the cue ball where you're feathering.
Practise by holding the cue between finger and thumb and accelerate through the cue ball with varying amounts of backswing for how much screw back you require. You should find yourself generating more screw back this way than with your present grip, which will tell you that you simply don't need to hit the ball as hard as you think, you have to hit it low.

Also lower your bridge hand by flattening the palm of your hand to the cloth rather than dip the cue down from your usual bridge height, this helps enormously, especially with those deep little soft screws to hold the cue ball off an angle.

Best summing up on how to strike a CB for screw. If you're afraid of getting low enough on the ball, and damaging the cloth, try what I did many years ago. Practice with the cover still on the table. Start hitting the ball correctly and it will return on even the smoothest of surfaces. Once you remove the fear, it becomes so much more natural a stroke.

[tepe]

If you don't have a decent cue action it is better to start to work with your timing rather than trying to hit very low the white. You would just have lots of miscues. You don't need to hit lower than a tip width below the center ball to get lots of reaction to the white. After you have improved your cue action so that your timing and follow thru is good, then it is time to practise hitting very low the white. Some years ago when I wanted to improve my ability to screw back, I did work the other way around (tried to hit as low the white as possble) and I ended up chipping the white all around the table.