Avoiding Scratching in Pool

Video Transcript

"Okay, we're back with our basic setup that we've been using the last few segments which is, just this object ball into that side pocket, cue ball approaching from an angle from left to right just as we've got setup here. The reason I come back to this point, though, is because this happens to be a particularly frustrating shot for a lot of beginners. What happens is, most of the time, they will hit that ball just wanting to pocket the ball, which they do most of the time because it's a relatively easy shot. But then what happens is, that ball, with a natural roll, the arc takes over and heads them right towards that corner pocket. Which we had happen to us earlier and shows that that's a dangerous shot. But, now with our new found knowledge on what the tangent line will do for us, we can use that, and we can dial in either some excess top spin or some back spin to avoid the scratch. Or, maybe we even want to not use either one. For position purposes, we may want to make this ball and use a sliding action. So, either way, whether we go top spin we can avoid the scratch. See how we got the cue ball over to here? Or we can use the sliding action, following the tangent line down that way. Or, we can use a backspin on our shot, right here, and draw off of the cue ball to avoid the scratch over this direction. Either way, we have several different options, here, that we can use that we can avoid that scratch that becomes such a problem for most players. Now it's not going to be a problem to us any more, we've got some knowledge that's going to help us avoid that."