Where To Hit The Ball - by Larry Eforgan

To impart spin onto the cue ball or to make sure that no spin is imparted it must be struck in the correct place.

If no spin is required then strike the cue ball dead center. (Where the vertical and horizontal lines meet on the diagram)

To impart any spin to the cue ball it is important to remember the basic rules of good cueing, always keep your cue level. (With a few very special exceptions) To hit the cue ball high, raise your bridge; don’t lower the butt end of the cue. To hit the cue ball low, lower your bridge; don’t raise the butt end of the cue. When playing any shot always follow through with your cue. Generally speaking the more follow through you have on your shot the more spin will be imparted. Oh! By the way, if anyone tells you that you can transfer spin from the cue ball to the object ball, they are wrong!!!!

The easiest spin to put on the cue ball is top spin. To do this you must strike the cue ball high, roughly on the inner circle towards the 12 on the diagram. This will make the cue ball run away from you after striking the object ball.

Next in difficulty is imparting bottom spin, known as screwing (honest!!). This kind of spin is done by hitting the cue ball very low, again roughly on the inner circle towards the 6 on the diagram. If you are successful with your shot, the cue ball will reverse and come back towards you after striking the object ball. Remember, to screw successfully you must follow through (now there’s an incentive eh!).

Probably of equal difficulty to screwing is side spin. This is played by hitting the cue ball to the right of center towards the 3 on the diagram for right hand spin, or towards the 9 for left hand spin; again, use the inner circle as a guide. Aiming to hit the object ball on the right and at the same time imparting right hand spin to the cue ball, is called running side. Aiming to hit the cue ball on the right hand side with left hand spin on the cue ball is called check side. Of course, this is reversed when aiming for the left side of the object ball.

A really hard skill to learn is using combinations of spin on the same shot. This is done by hitting the cue ball towards, either the numbers 1, 2,4,5,7,8,10 or 11. Now it is just as easy to hit the cue ball in one position as the next, obviously. The difficulty lies in learning where to hit the object ball. Imparting spin to the cue ball will make it curve in its trajectory slightly, which means that the object ball will need to be struck in a different position than when using no spin to make it behave in the same manner.