Читать книгу The Sport of Pool Billiards 1 - Ralph Eckert - Страница 32

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Training program

Little differences in style:

Some professionals tend to go „1-...shoot“ or even simply „… shoot“ rather than „1 - 2 -...shoot“! The most important thing is that, once your instinct tells you to play, you accustom yourself to your own preferred method and then stick to it! This way you can be sure that your stroke will always come through from the back in one clean, smooth movement and that you never shoot too impetuously. Some players prefer to take a short pause „at the front“ (i.e. with the cue directly in front of the cue ball) and others „behind“ (with the shooting arm at the rear). Others pause at the front and back. Since no empirical study has been done recommending the one or the other I think it is a matter of personal taste. For me, this „pause“ marks the time I take to fix my gaze on my target. The German national coach Andreas Huber likes to describe this pause as a „mental void“ or a „total inner silence“.

I hope that, with the explanations given here and a bit of prac-tice, you will succeed in mastering the 4 different speeds in this book. You will see that a good feeling for speed will improve your game and your results. But before we start on the PAT exercise (see diagram on next page), here‘s an overview of all the speeds. There are, of course, not just 4 speeds in a game of pool, but an infinite number. The more advanced the player, the more he differentiates his speed! With these 4 definitions, your trainer (and myself later in the book) can describe speed more accurately. Instead of saying „play lightly“ I can say „play with Speed 1.25“ and you will know what I mean because you have done this exercise. Of course, balls roll a different distance on different tables. If you are playing on a new table, you should play through these 4 speeds. You may find that Speed 2.5 requires a firmer stroke than on another table, but