The results from last week’s practice to do not reflect the efforts.
Sunday – No practice because I was at camp all weekend where I volunteered to be a camp counselor.
Monday (2.5hrs) – Back to work. No time to waste as I had just missed two days of practice from being at camp. Nothing significant to report. It was apparent that I had not hit a ball for two days.
Tuesday – no practice tonight. Taught my clinic at 7 o’clock and went home to recover from the very long weekend.
Wednesday (3.5hrs) – Back to basics. I spent over two hours shooting nothing but table length stop shots. I recently made a slight adjustment to my grip and discovered a flaw with the stroke. I spent the two hours just reaquainting myself with it and focusing on relaxing my grip and making sure my “pause” is long and pronounced.
Thursday (3hrs) – Tonight was the End-of-League tournament for our ACS league. It was handicapped & single elimination. It was my first taste of competition since I started my training again two weeks ago. Even though I was amonst my peers, I promised to take it very seriously. I won my first two matches and lost to my teammate, who was playing very well. It was only a race to three. Off to Table Steaks to practice.
I started doing this variation of “piling rocks” (just spreading all 15 balls on the table and shooting them off in no particular order) where I pile rocks without allowing the cue ball to bump into another ball. This is different from “keeping the cue ball off the rail” because I can let my stroke out a little more but still have to be conscious of where the cue ball is going. I shot about 15 racks of this with a 45+ & a 60+ ball run before deciding to play some 9ball with the ghost.
I’m glad I did! This may be my best reported score against the ghost to date. I won, 8-6. Stupid ghost! According to my notes, the racks that I did not get out of were a result of the following:
- missed 9 ball (tough cut in the side pocket)
- missed 6 ball (should’ve made)
- safety played (goofy rack)
- hooked on the 3 ball
- and two more misses that I should’ve made
Eliminate those misses and I only give up one game. My break was solid and I made a ball and had a good spread in just about every rack. I was pretty happy with my performance on this night.
Friday (3hrs) – It’s been nearly a week since I’ve been back on the horse and I sure can feel it in my back, my legs, and in my severely dry hands and achy fingers.
I had a pretty mellow evening of just piling rocks without touching another ball. Then, I played a few games of 9ball with Chisolm.
Saturday (3hrs) – It’s been nice. I’ve practiced on a different table just about every night this week. It was purely by circumstance, but it was good practice for me to adjust to the different tables.
Tonight I just piled rocks for a few racks and my good friend Sota that I hadn’t seen in a while stopped in. He’s an exceptional player that I couldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole about 5 years ago. Out of 9 games, I won 6-3. In the two of the three games that I lost, I missed balls and in the other one, I scratched on the 6 ball. Aside from that, I hardly missed and got out when I was supposed to. I was pretty happy with how I played.
Afterwards, it was close to closing time, so I shot about 10 racks of “keeping the cue ball off the rail” and finished with a high-run of 42. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for tomorrow night.
It’s coming together, but I still have a long way to go.
