Now it’s time to practice all of the skills Anthony has taught you in previous episodes. In this second to last episode of our series, he’ll teach you a ball running drill that will have you using your new skills to run ball.

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Transcription

Hello, I’m Master Instructor Anthony Beeler and today I want to show you a ball running drill that will enhance your ability to run balls during a match. Let’s go to the table and see what that looks like.

What we do for this is we just take 3 balls, we throw them into the end cushion, and then we take cue ball in hand. And our goal here is to run all 3 balls in rotation as we go through the correct mental processes and implement the correct stroke durations.

So, here I’m gonna set the cue ball here for my first shot and again, the first thing I want to do is decide where everything goes. The 2 is gonna go down here [far corner pocket straight down the rail], the 8 is gonna go in this pocket [opposite near corner pocket] and then I’m going to play back the 15 over here [closest corner pocket].

So, what angle do I have on the 2 ball? I’m giving myself a slight cut to the left so my cue ball will come out to the right. What spin do I need to hit it with? Maybe just a touch of above-center. And what speed? Just a slow to medium speed.

Once those decisions have been made, I’m just going to execute my shot. [set] 1, 2, 3… [pause] 1, 2… [finish/freeze] 1, 2, 3, 4.

Then I’m gonna get back up and look at this 8 ball. Did I get where I intended to be? Yes. So, I’m just going to continue on with my plan. The 8 ball is going to the right and the cue ball will be going to the left. What speed do I need to strike it with? A medium speed. What spin? Low-left. And I’m going to come back here [center of table] to try and pocket the 15.

Once those decisions have been made, I’m just going to go into execution mode. One potential problem here could be [that] maybe I could scratch in the side, so I want to be sure that I don’t ever hit it hard enough that I could possibly scratch in the side. So, here we go.

And again, I’ve got a good shot on the 15. The 15 is going to the left, the cue ball will be coming back to the right. Just gonna use a center-ball hit with a slow to medium speed. As far as avoiding potential problems I don’t wanna hit it hard enough that I could scratch in this side.

So then, I’ll get down into execution mode. [set] 1, 2, 3… [pause] 1, 2… [finish/freeze] 1, 2, 3, 4.

Now just keep doing that, over and over and over again. If you can do 3 balls 100% of the time, move up to 4. Once you can do 4 a large percentage of the time, then you can move up to 5 balls and so on. This is a great drill to practice as far as putting everything together that you learned.

The post Anthony Beeler Instructional Lesson #8: Ball Running Drill appeared first on McDermott Cue Blog.