Last night was my 8-ball bar-box league night. I got there a few hours early to get warmed up, since I hadn’t played in nearly a week. I felt pretty good after I ran a number of drills and exercises on the table. I decided to have dinner while I waited the last hour for the rest of my team to show up. They did, as did everyone else, and the first draw happened, and I wasn’t in the line-up. We swept the first round 5-0 and in the 2nd draw, I was last. By that time, I had been sitting for nearly 3 hours, so it’s no surprise I played poorly during my match. I missed a fairly standard combination, but even worse, I was gifted another chance to get back on the table and I overran position, leaving pretty backtough cut on the 8 that is almost always a scratch in in the diagonal opposite corner. I knew it, I shot it kill english, but still that cueball went dead-straight into the corner pocket, giving our team the only loss for the night. Oh well. Two games later we won the match.
Afterwards, a few of us stayed and shot around for a bit. As it figured, the first game was interesting… my opponent ran 6 balls and came up snookered, missing the kick shot gave me ball in hand with 2 different 2-ball clusters. Without any pressure, I decided on a route and went at it. I ran the rack. I was pretty happy, afterwall it was an 8-ball run-out, but to be fair it was an open table and I did start with ball in hand. Anyway, a few games later we were playing some of the team members and the table control went back and forth a bit. I made some really bad shots, but I also made some good ones. My “Super Shot of the Night” was this one:
The two opponents watching were sure to remark with ooh’s and ahh’s and we laughed at the dancing cue ball. It’s a shot I practice every time I’m at the hall, but usually it’s a back-cut not a stun-over. The CB mosied on over towards the side rail, but thankfully that spin kicked in and it picked up some juice. I was afraid it was going to get too close to the 4 ball when it started that way, luckily the cloth is slow. Of course, if it wasn’t, I probably would’ve went 2 more rails in the wrong direction. heh
All in all, it was a decent night, but I’m still unhappy with my match play.