Transcript
“Hi, I’m Andy ‘the Magic Man’ Segal. I’m here at Willow Billiards in Hoboken, New Jersey doing some trick shots and pool instruction. So, if you’re ready, let’s get started.
One of the most important things are the fundamentals. You want to make sure you’re standing properly, you’re holding the cue stick properly. The one thing you have to look at when you’re shooting a shot is ‘which direction do you want to shoot?’ If you want to shoot say this way, I don’t want to stand like this because then I can’t stroke the ball. So, I’m going to turn my body about forty-five degrees and step to the side a little bit. That allows me to bend over and now I’m directly in line with my shot.
To create a solid bridge, solid stroke, what you do is put a circle around the ball like you’re making an ‘okay’ sign and then just wrap your fingers around it and that gives you a nice solid bridge.
And for your backhand, hold it somewhere in the middle of the wrap, or if there’s no rap, just hold it where you feel comfortable. But, you want to make sure you that don’t hold it too tightly or too loosely. Hold it with about these two fingers and as you go back you make it looser, as you go forward, you make it tighter. And keep your arm as back as possible. You don’t want to have arm out here because then your cue stick goes like this. You bend over and you stroke it. Now, one of the things to help develop a straight stroke is to use this line between the bumper and the wood. What you do is you put your cue stick bridge right over the line, look down, and you shouldn’t be able to see any part of that line. Okay, and then just start stroking the ball like this, pretending there’s a cue ball right here. And if you’re stroking it properly, you shouldn’t be able to see the line at all. But, if you’re stick is waving like this, you’ll be able to see that line and now you know you’ll have to correct yourself. So just try this and that should help you develop a nice straight stroke. “
