Your Stroke is Your Most Powerful Weapon

I’m a huge believer in building a solid stroke. When it comes to playing pool, the only action you take playing the game is contacting the cue ball by stroking your cue. That’s it. After millions of balls pocketed and thousands of games played that’s all anyone who plays pool has ever done. So it makes sense that the most important physical aspect of anyone’s game is their stroke.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to develop a straighter stroke is to hit long straight in shots. The reason straight in shots are a fantastic tool for straightening your stroke is because you know if you miss it wasn’t an aiming issue. 99% of the time when I miss a straight shot it’s because of my stroke. Either there was unwanted spin, I had poor alignment, poor follow through, or a host of other reasons aside from aim that made me miss. Straight in shots help with isolating those issues.

A New Stroke Drill to Improve You Game

That’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to move on from only shooting straight in shots. I found a drill online that is a fantastic way to challenge yourself to create a better stroke and learn more about cheating the pocket in pool. The set up is still a straight in shot to the corner pocket, but this time instead of just making the object ball, you need to follow the cue ball into the same pocket as the object ball.

This might sound easy (I thought it was when I first heard of this drill), but it’s going to be harder than a diamond covered hammer. When we make shots in pool there’s a lot of room for error to make the ball. We can over or under cut the object ball by a fair margin and still make the ball if the conditions are right. Pool still isn’t easy, I’m just pointing out it’s possible to miss the center of the pocket and still make the object ball.

If we’re aiming for the center of the pocket, but we hit a different piece of it then we technically missed the shot. The beauty of shooting a straight in shot and purposely following the cue ball into the pocket is that it increases the margin for error of the shot exponentially. If you over cut the object ball to one part of the pocket, the cue ball won’t scratch into the pocket. If you undercut it, the same result will occur. Only when you hit the object ball perfectly where you intended will both the object ball and cue ball end up in the pocket.

My advice when shooting this drill is to pay extremely close attention to the contact point you intend to hit. If you under or over cut the object ball you’ll have to make minuscule adjustments to your aiming to be successful.

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