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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Things I Learned in Belgium and Holland - Part 1 of Many

I have been having trouble organizing my thoughts about my trip.  I am working on posting some of the assessment and training drills but they aren't ready yet.  There is so much that I want to share... in the interests of expediency I am going to just start writing things and not worry so much about the big picture.

1. Johan is a fascinating person and it was my pleasure to get to spend the week with him and his family.  It felt like the week was one long conversation that was primarily focused on pool but touched on many of the important aspects of life - music, religion, politics, family, philosophy and humor.  Johan has played every sport known to man and his life has had many, many incarnations so far (he wouldn't have it any other way.)

2. Pool in Holland started in the Coffee Shops.  Not sure why this surprised me at all.

3. I can't believe the lengths I will go to while playing pool to avoid my weaker shots.  My problem shots? Cutting the ball without English, using stun (especially near the rails), and draw with speed control among others.  My patterns are many times geared so that I can avoid the things that I'm not as good at.

4.  Europeans treat the break shot in Straight pool like a break shot.  Break shots are left at a slightly shallower angle and are hammered in using stun, stun follow or stun draw.

5.  The Dutch think it's weird to put too many things on a sandwich.  I taught Johan's kids that Nutella and peanut butter on the same sandwich is not bizarre, it's tasty.

more to come...

2 comments:

poolplayer2093 said...

so you're a big 14.1 fan now? i love that game. so far my high run is 56 but i'm always working on breaking it.

i go out of my way to avoid shots i don't shoot well too. good to know some pros make the same mistakes the rest of us make too

Liz Ford said...

That is my exact high run from 2004. Since then I only played for a period of about six months a few years ago. Though I ran plenty of 30's and 40's, I seemed to hit a wall after that. Now I am amped up to play again, armed with some new information and some better patterns.