I had a nice discussion with John Schmidt a few years back about making sure that you take the throw out of every shot.  That was great advice then and is still great advice.  I want to add another idea to this.  We want to take the wiggle out of every shot!

Now for those of you that are giggling, not much I can say, but for you serious pool players, let's see what that means and how it can help us.  A lot of what we are going to look at here has been written about before in terms of doing this, or not doing that.  What I want to do here is look at all these things in a proactive way.

The premise in this article is that skill at pool is really about hitting the target, the cue ball, exactly at a predetermined place with the cue tip.  All our misses result from either us not hitting the correct spot, or the object ball skidding.  There is nothing we will say about table factors in this discussion.  John Schmidt has us taking the throw out of every shot.  Now let's take out the wiggle!

The first area to look at is a long bridge.  The further the tip is from the cue ball the more it can wiggle on its way to hitting the cue ball.  Experience has shown that a bridge length of 6 to 8 inches gives us ample room for power and accuracy in hitting the cue ball.

Next up is having a firm bridge.  I don't like a death grip on the cue stick, but firm contact on the shaft that prevents the cue tip from wiggling during the stroke is what we are after.  Opening our bridge on the swing is also a bad habit that causes unwanted tip wiggle!

We also want to pull our cue stick straight back slowly when we are stroking.  Pulling straight back slowly keeps our tip better aligned with our target on the cue ball insuring a more accurate hit going forward.  A crooked pull back causes the tip to wiggle going forward.

Additionally we want to start our cue stick forward motion slowly.  Any jerky motion causes the cue tip to wiggle, and that causes a miss.  In fact any jerky motion causes our tip to wiggle.

Keeping our head still is another key point.  When our head moves, our body moves slightly, and you guessed it, it causes our tip to wiggle!

Finally is clenching up when the cue tip strikes the cue ball.  Again, this clenching causes the cue tip to wiggle and we won't hit the cue ball exactly where we want.  Another miss!

 

If it seems like I am nit picking about a millimeter, I am!  Here is a shot that I just missed by 1/2 a diamond.  I had the red dot lined up as the contact point to pocket the object ball.

 

 

When I took the shot, I missed the red dot by about 1 millimeter on the cue ball, and missed the shot by a 1/2 diamond! Here is a picture of that shot and the hit:

    

As you can see, I didn't miss the contact point by very much.

The moral of the story is to play better pool, take the wiggle out of every shot!
Good luck and see you on the road.