The Infamous “Cool Down” Stroke
I’ve recently noticed a strange phenomenon that I like to refer to as the “cool down” stroke.
It is exactly as it sounds - the opposite of a warm up stroke. A cool down stroke is when a player’s cue is still stroking after they’ve already struck the ball and the shot is complete. In my observations, there are two different types of cool down strokes.
The first is the classic runaway stroke. It’s as if their cue never stops moving. It’s out of control. Wait! Come back! It’s stroking before the hit, it strikes the ball, and it continues stroking afterwards. The fact that the player contacts the cue ball at all is just a circumstance of one extended warm up stroke.
The other one is the checking stroke. This typically occurs after a missed or poorly stroked shot. Some players have really made this a part of their routine. They feel an immediate need to double check what they were doing. Typically, the expression on their face reads, “Like this? No. Like that.”
I suppose in this case the cool down stroke could be a good learning tool. I guess the player that uses this is checking to see if their cool down stroke is the same as the actual stroke they just used. Are they checking their alignment? Are they simply trying to stay loose? I’m not quite sure.
The biggest obstacle with the cool down stroke is that, at its truest form, just about in every instance that I’ve seen it used, it is so soon immediately following the ball contact that the player is unable to follow through fully. They are almost lassoing their stroke back instead of delivering a full acceleration through the cue ball.
Do your strokes still count after you’ve already contacted the ball? Does what you do AFTER the shot change the outcome of the already completely shot? Stroke and keep stroking all you want, but once that ball has left your tip there is nothing you can do to change the results.
I’ve never seen Johnny Archer or Karen Corr with any extra movement after they strike the cue ball. They are steady, concise, and deliberate, keeping the excess to a minimum.
Therefore, instead of wasting the energy on stroking your cue afterwards, direct it towards all the essentials in properly executing the shot before and during. Direct it towards your pre-shot routine, your ball address, your stance, the contact point, your warm up strokes, and delivering a calculated shot. These are the things that affect the outcome of the shot, not the cool down strokes afterwards.
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