How to Grip the Pool Cue

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Joe, and I'm at Breaktime Billiards in Wilmington, North Carolina. Today I'm going to show you how I gripped the pool cue. Now, what I do is I find the balance point of the stick. And then I hold my stick about six inches back from that balance point. Now, when you grip the stick, there's a couple of different ways that you can do it. I use a full fingered grip. In other words it means that when I am holding the stick, all four of my fingers are on the stick. You can just use three fingers and let the pinkie kind of just be out a little bit. What's important is that when you grip the stick back here, that you do not hold it stiff or hard. It has been said that if you were to hold it like a canary, you don't want the canary to fly away, but then again you don't want to kill the canary. So you have to hold it a certain tension to have that happen. It's the same way when you hold the pool cue. You want to make sure that your grip is at the three to six inches behind the balance point. You want to make sure you're either using a four or three fingered grip. And that you're not holding it any harder than you need to hold a canary. And then, nice and relaxed, you'll be taking your stroke and that will allow your wrist to hinge and be able to make a good stroke on a pool ball."