Roger Long has been a BCA Instructor since 1993. He is the former owner of CuePort Billiards in Lakeland Florida and a regular contributer to Table Talk Newspaper here in Phoenix. His column appears here courtesy of Billiards Table Talk. Previous months columns are available here.
	Can’t Draw The Cue Ball? It’s A Snap! By Roger Long, BCA Certified Instructor OK, so you’re doing all of the things you’ve been told to do in order to execute the draw shot, but your cue ball either stops dead still or it only manages to lazily roll back a couple of inches. So what’s the problem? How about if we go over that checklist one more time to see if we can find out. Have your tip properly shaped. A properly manicured tip will give you maximum surface contact between it and the cue ball. Maximum surface contact between the tip and cue ball is a GOOD thing. The roundness of a nickel is what most of the top players prefer. Make sure your tip is chalked before shooting. This doesn’t mean that you only chalk up before shooting a session or shooting a game, it means you should chalk up before shooting each shot - particularly the draw shot! Chalk provides grip, and grip is another GOOD thing. Cue as low as you can. That means as low on the cue ball as you can get away with, without a miscue. You’ll know when you’re cueing too low, because your cue ball will be skipping right over the object balls and doing swan dives into the pockets. Knowing just how low you can get on the cue ball, without the added acrobatics, will only come with practice. Keep the back end of the stick down. The draw shot is no different from any other in this respect. You always want to keep the cue as level as possible. Just because you’re cueing low with the tip of your stick doesn’t mean you get there by lifting up on the back of it. The correct method is to lower your bridge hand as far as possible, and then lower the back end of the cue right along with it. Follow through. Once again, it’s no different from other shots. You want to have a follow-through of 4”-6” on most shots, but on the draw shot you’ll usually be wanting to follow through even farther. Use a fast stroke. Notice, I didn’t say get the shot over with quickly. I also didn’t say that you should jerk your cue back as you prepare to deliver your final stroke. On the contrary. What you want to do is use the same smooth and graceful back stroke and forward motion that you normally use, but with the draw shot you want the forward motion to be accelerated more. Snap your wrist when you stroke. This is the real key to successfully executing draw shots. If you have been doing all of the above things, but still haven’t been able to suck the cue ball back, the wrist snap may be the secret element that has been eluding you. If you’ve ever popped anyone on their back side with a towel, you know what type of wrist snap I’m talking about. The wrist action required to draw a cue ball is the same as that used to snap a towel, except that you use an underhand motion instead of a sidearm motion. To make the action work, however, you’ll have to remember to keep your wrist loose all through the stroke. You then concentrate on thrusting the cue through the ball, and then snapping it back at the end of the follow-through. So what is it about the wrist snap that makes it so effective in drawing the cue ball? Well, fellow cuemeisters, it’s just this. By putting a snap in your stroking action, you are able to maintain maximum speed on the cue all the way to the end of the forward stroke. This is because the snap allows you reverse the direction of the cue very rapidly, which is something you want to do on a draw stroke so that you can get the cue out of the way of the returning cue ball. If you try locking your wrist and then attempt to generate enough forward speed for a draw stroke, you will find that you actually have to incorporate a second set of muscles to start “braking” the cue earlier than desired in order to get it to come to a stop at the end of the stroke. Then, when you reverse the direction of the cue, you have to bring more muscles into play and make this a totally new motion. All of this takes time, which equates to a slower moving cue. And a slow cue on a draw shot is NOT a good thing. With a loose wrist and a snapping action, however, you will find the cue returning just as fast as it was thrust forward. Fast out - fast back. That’s why it’s called a snap. And a snap in a draw stroke is a GOOD thing.   All copyrights are owned by Roger Long. No duplication is allowed without his permission.