Attitude is Everything
This article is part of Volume 6 of PoolSynergy, a monthly collection of the best writing on pool. After you read it, be sure to check out the rest of the April edition of PoolSynergy for other great articles over at Diary of a Pool Shooter. The April theme is The Most Important Thing.
Our host Mike McCafferty’s challenge to us this month was to name and defend our choice for the one most important thing in pool. It seems at first like a very tough challenge, since there is so much to know and so many fundamental truths to understand deeply if one is to really learn this game, let alone master it.
As in life though, attitude is everything. No matter your physical prowess, your mental acumen, nor your time playing the game, without a great attitude, sustained over years, you won’t come close to achieving your potential.
Many aspects of attitude are important, i.e., your continued love of the game and your ability to find it enthralling after playing for years. A positive attitude will help you get past all the rough spots. Another big one is being open to learning and understanding that there is always more to learn. This one has a tough corollary, namely you often can’t learn something new without changing some part of a thing you thought you already knew.
There are many other aspects to attitude that in the long run trump any game specific thing you can learn, but my choice for the most important thing to help you maximize your pool playing potential is being detail oriented. The following words, sadly all with strong negative connotations, will round out the different aspects of this concept: hard to please, demanding, painstaking, exacting, precise, meticulous and fastidious.
Attitude is Everything
Pool is a game of extreme subtlety. There are innumerable details about each aspect of the fundamentals that together make up one’s stroke. There are the countervailing forces you must balance when you make a cut shot, especially when you put english on the ball. There’s the myriad of choices you have to make about which ball(s) to shoot, in what pocket, in which order. You need to decide among and be able to execute your choice of various routes for the cue ball take, etc.
Because there are so many things to consider at virtually every point in every game, and because execution has to be so accurate, you need to pay attention to exactly what you’re doing, and exactly the results you’re getting, so that you have an accurate picture of which part or parts are causing the problems. Even a 1 degree error can cause you to miss some shots, and can play havoc with your position.
You simply must be attentive to the little things. It won’t do you any good to work on your aim if the problem is that you’re putting unintended english on the ball and throw is what’s causing you to miss. Noticing that your run ended because the shape you had gotten on the ball was poor, rather than that you should have made the tough shot is only a start. Figuring out why you got that poor shape is even more important, because you can’t fix a problem you don’t really understand.
The most important thing to help you maximize your pool playing potential is being detail oriented.
Did the cue ball follow your intended path and go too far or come up short, or did the CB not follow the intended path? If the latter, did the error start immediately, with the CB leaving the collision on the wrong line, or did too much or too little follow or draw push or pull the ball off the tangent more or less than you expected. Did you hit the rail in the right spot but then leave it at the wrong angle, or did you miss the spot? Did you hit a ball en route? Each of these is a different problem with a different solution. You must zero in on exactly what’s wrong, or you’ll be spending time working to fix what isn’t broken.
More difficult to figure out, but no less important to understand are things like: did you play the best pattern, did you choose the correct routes from ball to ball, did you mix offense and defense appropriately, and on and on.
Knowing that each of these is important, and that you may not know how to determine which, if any, are suboptimal, you can seek help from more knowledgeable players/instructors and can do some research to give you tips on how to do the diagnostics on your own. Here to, though, attitude is everything. You must be open to criticism, willing to listen rather than talk, and willing to get worse before you get better. Don’t just take everything at face value, ask lots of questions so you can really understand the “why” as well as the “what” and the “how”. But be careful to be curious and thoughtful rather than stubborn and argumentative. Your great attitude can turn a good instructor into an extraordinary one.
Improving your game requires shoring up your weaknesses, especially the ones that come up over and over. Improving your banking, even if is the worst shot in your arsenal, isn’t as important as fixing an aiming/throw problem that comes up on every cut over a foot or two. You need to be sensitive to everything, learn to pay attention to the smallest mistake, and learn to care about them because they are the keys to your improvement.
Learn to pay attention to the smallest mistake, and learn to care about them, because they are the keys to your improvement.
Improving your game also requires finding the best stance / grip / stroke / pre-shot routine / pace / etc. for you and sticking with it. First, it’s very difficult to hone something to perfection if you don’t do it the same way every time. Second, it’s impossible to sense how your errant shot was different from your normal shots if you don’t have a normal shot to compare it to.
As you standardize your fundamentals, pay more and more attention to how you are executing. Don’t try to control them, just pay attention to them, notice every nuance. Let your subconscious fix the problem(s) you discover. This technique, delineated in detail, can be found in The Inner Game of Tennis, by Tim Galwey.
To sum up, being attentive to detail is the single most important thing you can do to improve your game. It will help you see more in other people’s games, get more out of books, videos and personal instruction, and help you to recognize the real issue in every problem you come across, enabling you to solve it efficiently and effectively.
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6 Responses to “Attitude is Everything”
g2
- April 15th, 2010
Pool is a small muscle sport thus the itty bittiest of details make all the difference to success and failure on the green.
I think it’s important for players who look to excel in this game to read an article like yours as you really have to be honest with yourself and ask, “am I prepare to challenge myself to respect all these little details of the game. Truly all of them, as disrespecting any will trump the other strengths.”
If some knew from the beginning how hard it would really be, they may not have stepped into the ring.
Mike Fieldhammer
- April 15th, 2010
Great stuff John!
About attention to detail: I’ve run racks where I never hit the part of the pocket I wanted or my speed was a fraction off. Sure I won the game, but it wasn’t perfect. I knew that if I didn’t sharpen up I wouldn’t get out the next game or pocket the really tricky shot.
This is why I have such an appreciation for top level snooker. Those players refine every single piece of their game because they know there is no wiggle room on a template ocean table. They understand how important attention to detail really is.
Tony Newton
- April 19th, 2010
Hello: I wrote you previously, got a prompt response, so I thought I’d give it another go. I make it a point to check out your site as frequently as possible as I really enjoy it–plenty of useful tips and inside info. I really think you’re to be congratulated.
Still, I’m a little surprised you don’t seem to have any articles on what to do about a slump or a losing streak. Mine has reached four losses in a row in weekly APA 8 ball. The perplexing thing perhaps is that I’m not shooting badly; in fact I really believe my “marksmanship” has improved since I got the IPAT workbook and DVD a few weeks back and have done some of the drills, and since I’ve really worked on incorporating quiet eye in my shooting–both after reading articles about them on your site. Heck I’ve run the table twice in my last three matches, something I’ve never done that frequently before. Yet, I keep losing.
I’m just wondering if I should just ignore this as just not getting the breaks and that these things are natural–even the Yankees and Lakers have losing streaks and eventually return to their winning ways. Or, is there something specific I ought to be doing to remedy the situation? (FYI: I’m an APA 6, but at the rate I’m going, I’ll be a 3 pretty soon!)
Thanks for any insights, and again, you’ve got a great site.
John Biddle
- April 19th, 2010
Hello again, Tony, and thanks for the kind words about my blog. Though it’s particularly tough to offer advice via email I’ll give it a try.
First the good news. “I’m not shooting badly; in fact I really believe my ‘marksmanship’ has improved.” You’re improving parts of your game with your efforts with IPAT and that’s great, keep it up.
The second piece of good news is that improving is much more important than winning (in the short term) because skill is what drives winning, not the other way around. If you continue to improve you will start to win more and more often, though never all the time. One thing you can do is to try to figure out what went wrong in every game you lose. Be honest with yourself. It’s painful, but very rewarding.
Shooting accuracy is great, but it’s a far cry from the only skill needed in pool in order to have a well rounded, successful game. Face it, in competition your opponent will bang on your weaknesses until you succumb. Your job is to find your weaknesses, figure out which are the most important to fix, and work on those. Remember that “most important to fix” depends not only on how low your skill is in that particular area, but also on how much you use it.
Without seeing your game I’m very hesitant to give specific advice, but the 3 things that trip up most people in 8 Ball are cue ball control, offense vs defense, and pattern play. Each has sub parts where you might be good at some but bad at others. The more you can drill down and figure out exactly what is going wrong, the easier it will be to fix it. The post above talks about this.
A good drill for cue ball control is to throw the balls out on the table, shoot by yourself, and before every shot, decide exactly where the cue ball is going for your next shot. Mark that spot with a dime, and see how close you can come to leaving the ball there. Notice why you missed (too short or long, wrong angle off OB, wrong angle off cushion, etc) and make a note. Pick up the dime and do it again. when you have a page of notes after 3-4 racks, take a look. Is there a pattern to your mistakes? If you miss by a lot, put the balls back and do it again. Are you missing because you are not executing well or because you picked the wrong place as a destination? Remember, position only counts if you make the ball.
A good drill for offense vs defense is just to strengthen your defense, since most people tilt way too much toward offense because their defense is weak. Throw all 7 solids and the 8 ball out on the table. You’re solids. Your goal is to make every ball without ever giving your opponent, the 8 ball ghost, a shot at the 8 Ball. You can run out, or play safe, but if you ever leave the opponent able to see any part of the 8 ball when your turn is over you lose.
Lastly, a practice drill for pattern play is to throw out 3 striped balls and the 8 and then run them. Keep doing this until you can run out 8 times out of 10. Once you can, add another stripe, until you eventually get to the whole set of stripes. Pay attention to the pattern you originally chose as you work through the rack. Can you execute it as intended, or did you have to go to plan B? Why? If you aren’t completing your runouts as originally planned, is it execution mistakes, or was the plan too hard? Are there certain shots that give you particular difficulty? Make a note and practice them afterward to make them your friends instead of enemies.
I hope this helps. Let me know what you think. I wish you the best going forward, and keep working on getting better, it’s the only true way to master this game.
Tony Newton
- April 20th, 2010
John: Thanks for another quick response and insights. I think you’re right on target on the offense/defense issue. Reviewing my losses, there were 2-3 instances where I should’ve played safe, but instead chose offense on what at the moment looked like makeable shots, only to miss and then lose the game.
Summing it all up, it seems to me there’s an interesting mental aspect to this–with improved offense, I’ve perhaps starting to think TOO offensively, forgetting about defense at critical points. This is a little ironic because over the years I’d developed a reputation for defensive ability. In fact, one player in an in-house league I used to play in said I was one of the best defensive players in the league.
Anyway, I started practicing the ghost 8 ball you recommended–ran out once, and then blew a safety the next time I tried (although the resulting 8 ball shot I left my “opponent” was no shoe-in). Anyway, I’ll keep at this drill in my next practice session next weekend. Unfortunately, being a working stiff, I can only get away to practice one day a week, usually Saturday.
Again, thanks for the great advice.
John Biddle
- April 20th, 2010
Tony, You’re entirely welcome. Two quick things:
If you practice shots using a technique called Progressive Practice, you’ll not only get better at those shots (whatever shots you want) but you’ll learn at the same time where your 50% success point is, which will give you an objective benchmark as to how hard the shot you’re looking at really is. If you want to know the 80% point, just shoot each particular shot in groups of 5, and if you don’t make 4 of them, fall back, and if you do, advance.
You can do the 8 Ball defense drill as a game, with one guy running out and the other on the 8 Ball. The guy running out cannot make more than 2 balls in any inning (doesn’t have to make any). The guy on the 8 Ball just has to make it. You can switch off for each race to 3.
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