How Backspin Affects the Cue Ball

Video Transcript

"OKay, our last cue ball action that we can use in conjunction with the tangent line is backspin. Backspin is nothing more than the same spin that we put on the cue ball when we were using a draw shot. But, now on our draw shot, that was when the two balls were lined up straight for a straight in shot, we could get the cue ball to come straight back to us. But what happens when we're at an angle like this? We already know that we can't get the cue ball to come straight back because of the angle. So, what's going to happen here is we have to look at our tangent line again, we're going to identify it as running, pretty much, that direction right there. Now, if we have a backspin on the cue ball, what's going to happen here is, it's spinning backwards, comes over, hits that contact point, starts out on the tangent line but only follows it for a very short distance, once again. That distance is only about an inch. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, that's depending on the speed that you hit it with. But, it'll start out on that and it'll go that direction for a very short distance, then the backspin will take over, and it will arc back this direction, to the right in this case because our cut shot is to the left. So, a draw shot using backspin would look like this. Comes over that way."