I went to play in the weekly tournament again last night. After not hitting a ball for more than a week, I certainly didn’t expect to do very well. And although I lost 12 out of 13 matches for the entire night, there are 2 shots I pulled which are worth mentioning. Both came in my 1-loss side match, the first is this one:
He had pushed out after the break to the initial layout. This guy is a smart player so I figured he had a plan if I gave it back. I looked at it a few minutes then saw it. I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off, but even if I didn’t hide the 1, there’d still be distance involved. I thinned the 1 and watched it trickle on over behind the 5, I was quite happy. Then I noticed the cue ball travelling precariously close to the corner pocket. It missed it, and 2-railed to end up behind the 8. I couldn’t believe it! It’s probably one of the best safeties I have ever intentionally played. Now, I did not figure to get behind the 8 as I was mostly playing the 1 ball with the hope of getting down-table without running into anything.
The 2nd great shot was another safety, where he got on the wrong side of the 2, leaving no pocket for it. He banked it up-table and hide me behind a blocker. I thought about jumping over the blocker, but then I noticed the 2 ball was on the dead corner-5 track. I looked at the rest of the track and the path was clear, plus going this way it was less dangerous of a foul. I lined up, hit the cb about “pocket speed” to send it to the corner (meaning hard enough to move the 2 away, but didn’t fire it). I got a nice roll by hitting the 2 rail-first when sent the CB nicely over to hide behind 2 blockers. I don’t think I could do it again on purpose, but I’ll be sure to remember that rail-first trick in the future!
I still lost that match 5-0 because I couldn’t even get close to controlling my speed, I always overran by 2 feet, or underran by 2 feet.
Like I said, I didn’t expect to do too well, but I didn’t expect to go down 7-1 in my first and 5-0 in the 2nd. I never really got mad though, which is good – but I also know I didn’t because I was mentally exhausted and entirely distracted from the tournament by some things going on in my personal life.
After I lost the 2nd match, I stayed and hit some balls just to make sure I can do it. It was nice “alone” time at the time, I didn’t do any drills or anything, just tried to remember the last few stroke techniques I was trying to employ.
Oh, one more entertaining point. At one point, he tried to play safe on the 7 and nearly got there, but he left the important edge. I got down, hit and watch it trickle across the table and hit the long rail!! I never overcut that ball, usually I undercut it and drive it straight into the end rail. Even my opponent mentioned you don’t often see that. hahaha