Searching for Mr. Stroke

As anyone who read this blog knows, I am a stroke maven, a pursuer of the Holy Grail of strokedom and a stroke techie. For me, it is paramount to a good pool match that can be won't or lost. Any wrong movement of the grip, the bridge, the head or an uncomfortable stance spells doomsday in a match.

One of the biggest culprits in the stroke is the scoop motion that so many players do without realizing it. The motion will also cause the head to come up.....or does the head come up before the stroke is finished thus causing the scooping motion? Or is it a simultaneous movement of equal mistakes? Or is it a too tight grip that can cause lost of control and followup? There are so many variables to consider when a person picks up a cuestick.

Last Monday at the league night I did not play due to the matchups. That in turn gave me time to analyse some of the strokes of the various players that played. It was like watching a movie. There were level cues, some slightly below level with the tip facing north of the equator, some with the butt raised various degrees, upright stances, side way stances, elbows flared out, wrist bent outward and inward,tight grips, forward grips and rear grips. And then there were a few miscues because some players forget what the chalk is for. The most entertaining was those who used body language. They are the ones you do not want to stand too close to less your eyeball becomes a cueball.

The interesting thing is that, despite all the different postures that come into play, the people who have one or some of the faults, come to play and they also come to win. The faults are not really faults. They are movements that each individual player developed as they learned the game, and no one ever took the trouble to point them out and try to correct them. The players, as a result, practiced the wrong thing instead of the right thing. And over time, taking into consideration the indomitable spirit of the human race, players took the wrong thing and adapted it to their own vision of the right thing and started winning matches.

So.....whose to say what is right and wrong? Not me...I've got my own stroke problems.