left sidespin

[parkourfan]

Hi
I'm playing snooker for half an year now and when I shoot, I always put unintentional left sidepin on the cueball.
Can anyone tell me what I may do wrong ?
Thanks

[JamesFoster]

You must be either cueing straight and striking the cueball on the left hand side. Or much more likely you are striking the cueball in the centre but you are cueing across. You are taking the cue back slightly to the right and then following through slightly to the left. Its weird because top golfers and tennis players do this all the time on purpose. But a top class snooker player tries to never do this unless with a swerve or masse shot.
Don't worry everyone does it. The better the player the less they do it. Practice striking the cueball in the centre along the spots from the brown spot to the black spot and top cushion and back again. Stay down on the shot and don't move your head. The cueball will come back exactly towards the brown spot. Next pot some straight blues on their spot in the opposite centre pocket. Take the cueball a little further away each time. Then do the same but in one of the corner pockets.

[checkSide]

Either not seeing the centre of the ball correctly due to dominant eye issues.

Or cueing across the ball, due to not aligning yourself and your cue correctly on you sighted line of aim.

I have also struggled with these issues.

Edit: James beat me to it with a better answer!

[bongo]

You could be doing many things wrong. The problem could be to do with your stance, grip, body movement, sighting, or simply cue action problems. I can't really say exactly what you are doing.

The practice I can suggest is to get the cue ball, put it on the brown spot, or slightly to the side of it if there is a pit in the spot. Address the cue ball and put the tip touching the cue ball, and just push it into the top pocket. Any side and you won't get it in the pocket. There is no object ball in the practice, if you wanted to you could have an object ball though. There must be NO SOUND between tip and cue ball because you won't be pushing the cue ball and the practice won't work.

[moglet]

The practice I can suggest is to get the cue ball, put it on the brown spot, or slightly to the side of it if there is a pit in the spot. Address the cue ball and put the tip touching the cue ball, and just push it into the top pocket. Any side and you won't get it in the pocket. There is no object ball in the practice, if you wanted to you could have an object ball though. There must be NO SOUND between tip and cue ball because you won't be pushing the cue ball and the practice won't work.

I can see where you are going with this bongo, trouble is, the dynamics are all wrong, great demonstration of what can happen in these circumstances, but the earlier replies are much more germane.

It is one thing to train your muscle memory and co-ordination to a flowing and "dynamic" motion and quite another to do it for an artificial circumstance.

[1lawyer]

I agree with Moglet and James on this one...

James gives good examples on over coming this if indeed you think it is a problem that effects your game. Try potting those long blues and making the white follow it in off with top this is a hard exercise and impossible to do unless you are hitting the correct point on the white and everything is in line.

I have to say Bongo I don't agree that pushing the white ball to the pocket is a good exercise to correct this fault at all, as Moglet explains with a rather eloquent turn of phrase.. It is rather better to learn to drive through the ball properly as this little video demonstrates...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRVxI...eature=related

[RocketRoy1983]

Both of you are correct and Bongos suggestion should be practiced too. Its not as easy as it seems.

[JamesFoster]

I was reading some Frank Callan and Terry Griffiths coaching guides from snooker scene:
http://www.snookerscene.co.uk/page.php?id=37

Reading about how there is so much variation in just the grip, it made me think about what generalisations can be made about technique:
1. The bridge hand should be spread out and be as stable as possible.
2. The cue should be held with the thumb, index and middle finger.
3. The right leg should be braced and the left leg bent forward into the shot.
4. The cue must accelerate through the cueball.
5. No part of the body other than the hand and forearm should move during the shot.
6. The hand has to move straight back and straight through like a piston.
7. Side should not be used if it is not needed.
8. The player should try and sight the object ball with both eyes, unless one eye is dominant.
Thats all I can think of right now.

[bongo]

the dynamics are all wrong

The aim of the practice that I suggested was to be able to SEE the centre of the cue ball. The practice forces you to strike the centre of the cue ball or it won't go into the pocket.

Or another practice, put cue ball on brown spot, 5 reds either side of it, on the baulk line in a straight line, evenly spaced out and not too much space between them, put them very close together actually.

Then play from the brown spot, strike up the spots with a little but of side and try to hit each red next to white as the white comes off top cushion with the little bit of side. Putting very small amounts of side actually helps you to see the centre of the cue ball. It is like 'mastering the errors'.

[vmax4steve]

Or you could just learn to live with left side cueing and compensate for it.
I know someone who does this and he is a hundred break player.
You don't have to be perfect.

[mihnea]

Ian McCulloch is cueing to the left side and is no.35 in WBSA ranking, so...

[bongo]

Or you could just learn to live with left side cueing and compensate for it.
I know someone who does this and he is a hundred break player.
You don't have to be perfect.

You could do that. If I needed to do that, it would be a real pain and get annoying after a while. Obviously I would still enjoy the game but not as much as I would normally do.

[wildJONESEYE]

it is hard to know what youre doing but the most likely thing is cuing across on follow through.....

it looks easy to cue straight but theres so much that can go wrong even profesionals cue across sometimes.

[parkourfan]

Hi
Thanks for your tips.
I also asked a pro in my snooker club. He told me, that I am aiming wrong and because of that, I'm not able to see the centre of the ball. So I have to try to aim further to the right.