How to Stroke the Pool Cue

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Joe, I'm at Breaktime Billiards in Wilmington, North Carolina and I'm going to show you what makes a good stroke. Now, when you get ready to stroke the cue ball, you have to have certain fundamentals. One of those is when you grip the back of the cue, is that you don't use a death grip. You have to be relaxed. You have to hold it firm enough that the, the cue won't slide in your hands, but you don't want to hold it so tight that, that it it tightens up all your muscles. What that does is it allows your back hand and your wrist to hinge. The other thing that you want to do is you want to try to keep the cue stick as level as possible. You don't want to try and to shoot center ball, jack up the back end of your stick like this. You want to try to keep it level. So if I was shooting draw, which is the lower part of the ball, I would keep the stick here when I stroke. Follow, I would keep it here. Center, I would keep it here. So if I could keep it as level as I can, that's one of the things that make for a good stroke. The other thing that makes for a good stroke is straightness. Basically all you're going to is you're going to draw the cue stick back and you're going to take the cue stick forward. You're going to do this a few times, which are called practice strokes. And then you're going to have your hit stroke which is the final stroke where the cue ball goes through, hits the cue ball, follows through. The cue ball hits the two and makes it in the side pocket. Now you have to be sure to follow through. Follow through helps make your Englishes and how the cue ball reacts to do the same thing every time. So, remember a relaxed grip, level cue stick and follow through. And then straight back and straight through. That's how you make a good stroke."