There is much to be learned. For the last few years, I've tried to incorporate what I can remember from my discussions with Hal Houle, and what I taught myself much later after exposure to CJ Wiley's touch of inside ideas. What I got from all that was a way to aim using mostly inside but also outside. In short, the aiming system was designed to incorporate the expected deflection of the cue ball so that it would hit the object ball at the contact point causing it to compensate for the anticipated throw created when the cue ball strikes the object ball. Got that? Eventually, I worked it out for myself so I now have more than just instinct and feel and experience to draw upon, but a pretty useful system for aiming and controlling the cue ball at the same time. It may not hold up to Dr. Dave or Bob Jewett's scrutiny, but it kinda works for me.
The critical aspect of this idea is cue ball deflection: even though I use a Revo now, it still causes deflection on every off center shot, so my goal was to harness the power of deflection whilst aiming.
Just before the lockdown, I spent some time studying the stroke of Alex P., especially shots where he is applying english, and what I realized is that he hits many spin shots without causing deflection on the cue ball, and he uses a wood shaft, not even a predator. So that got me thinking about how to hit an off center cue ball to cause the least amount of deflection possible. In my pandemic era practice, which has been not much, what I'm gleaning so far is that if I don't poke or punch or stroke with authority, but slowly follow through on the shot, I can reduce deflection dramatically and aim at the Houle spots without the deflection compensation built in.
As I'm writing all of this, I realize how hard it is to put any of this into words, so I hope it makes sense to someone out there.
So Mr. Ghost, I think this is what you are getting at in this thread...how to aim that shot with max spin but minimum deflection. In your example, you are hitting the object ball fuller than would get you to the ghost ball contact point (undercutting it, in other words) but using the spin to gear the ball into the pocket. So tell me: how are you accounting for the deflection when you set up to aim this shot?
and it’s still takes practice to understand the explanation, as well as the shot... Good work... as usual Ghost...
