A longtime teaching pro at Amsterdam Billiard Club in New York City, Tony has dozens of regional and national titles to his name, including the 2004 BCA Open Championships.
I’m going to continue to answer questions from readers, and the next one I hear a lot.
It seems like I hit ’em hard on my break, but the balls don’t do much after impact. How can I get more power? — J.T.
When I teach the break, I simply put the 1 ball on the foot spot, put the cue ball anywhere on the head string, and say, “Let me see you hit a stop shot.” Ninety percent of the time, they cannot shoot a stop shot from that distance. If you can’t hit the 1 ball dead-on, what makes you think you can hit a rack effectively?
You have to learn how to hit the head ball squarely. Try an exercise in which you hit the stop shot above 10 times (see Diagram 1). For those not entirely familiar with stop shots: You stroke the cue ball right at its center, or just slightly below, and hit the 1 ball fully. With a perfect hit, the cue ball will stop right in its tracks.
A trick that I learned from former women’s pro Nesli O’Hare is to treat the break shot just like any other — meaning that you should line it up (with your back foot in line with the cue ball and object ball) and step into it like you would any other shot. And for this exercise, stay down and still through the entire shot — which means you’re just using arm power, and not moving your body forward.
Stay loose. When we try to smash the rack, we tend to tense up and tighten our grip, which can inhibit arm speed and jerk your stroke off target. So keep a loose grip and follow through on your stroke to the center of the table.
Also, don’t rush your back stroke. When we try to hit it hard, we usually pull back too fast. The only thing that matters is controlled acceleration on your forward stroke.
In this exercise, pay attention to the cue ball. If it isn’t stopping, note which direction it goes. If it’s going to the right more often, for example, adjust slightly.
Once you’ve mastered the stop shot, use a full rack. Later, you can put more of your body into the break stroke for forward momentum. But remember that you don’t need to have a big, full-body, Bustamante-like move to get power. It’s all about hitting the head ball square.
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