04/07/2026
Each player goes through 3 stages of cue ball control 🎱
1️⃣ Basic movement: stop, follow, draw
We can discover these even in our first months of learning the game. Getting the cue ball travel over a longer distance is often limited by technique, though.
2️⃣ Stun shots
A year or so in, we discover the whole array of stun shots. They feel great and allow us to play almost every shot with medium-ish speed and decent accuracy, so we fall in love with them very fast.
This is a needed step, but also a huge limitation to developing stroke efficiency required to do power spin shots. When everything is a stun, we can’t properly apply rotation - this is why most amateurs struggle with the long draw so hard.
The cue ball moves around the table mostly by applying speed, which makes us miss a lot more balls that we’d like to.
3️⃣ Spin shots
This is when we finally get to the true mastery.
Understanding pool physics deeply makes every shot a soft touch. Now, the cue ball travels around the table with the help of spin, so most shots can be done with pocket speed (up to 2x lower than stun).
The stroke becomes relaxed and effortless, so we get to make more balls and run out more often.
In this example, a soft stop shot with maximum low spin can help us slow down the cue ball after the contact even when we have a slight angle.
With a harder stun shot, the cue ball will travel a lot further, so we’ll lose position most of the time.
This is why I recommend practicing such shots this way from the very beginning.
Keep shootin’ 🍄🎱
