Kick Shot

Normally when I diagram a shot, it's to illustrate a triumphant match-winning runout or it's just an extraordinarily low-percentage fluke shot that miraculously happens to go into a pocket. This is a fluke shot that I made last night that left me in perfect position on the 8. I was shooting stripes and had only my 6 ball remaining. I had taken a coach beforehand, thinking I might be able to go the long way up the table and kick back into the 6 into the corner pocket. (Do note that this diagram is very approximate and is almost misleading: in real life there was almost enough room between the 14 and the 15 to kick into the 6, and the 10 wasn't in my way for that long shot. But for the purpose of showing how the shot actually happened I am diagramming it as such.) I wasn't intending to actually make a shot, I was simply trying to avoid giving my opponent ball in hand. My coach thought was I going to do two quick rails into the 6, but when I told him my plan he agreed. I told the other team to watch the hit to make sure it was clean. Then I put a put a ton of left english on the cue ball with a fairly solid hit. It sprung right off the rail and smacked the 6 nearly head-on, sending it flying into the cross side pocket. Meanwhile, the cue ball went two rails (shown in grey lines) and came back up in line for a near straight-in shot on the 8. I always try to slow myself down when I'm on the 8 in particular. And I actually did step away from the table to look it over, mark my pocket, chalk up, etc. But when I got down on the shot, the 10 ball was under my left forearm (my left hand is my bridge hand) and it just felt awkward. I couldn't spread my bridge hand out like I wanted, I had to keep my fingers closer together in order to keep my arm up higher so that it wouldn't touch or rest on the 10. I tried to get as comfortable as possible, but you know how it goes when the adrenaline is flowing, you just go for it. Surely enough, I flubbed on the 8 ball. But in the end it all came out in my favor. I won my match and kept my winning streak alive, 4-0 for the season. As a team we recovered from our 0-5 drubbing last week and went home with a could've-been-worse 2-3 loss.