Well this is a topic that can really get me going. I'm afraid this will be a long post.

As a hardcore feel player (is that an oxymoron?) I can tell you that my game is either really on or really off. Wihout consistent mechanical elements there is much more reliance on proper and consistent mental state - and that's something both types of players have problems with. In the event of an attitude breakdown, a more mechanical (I don't like that term, sounds robotic and uncaring) player at least has sound fundamentals to prevent too much slipping in his/her game. A feel player without the proper mental state may as well have stayed home. On the other hand, I often break and run a rack of 9-ball in under 30 seconds - I sometimes even string 2 or 3 together like that - and when that happens I feel exhilarated. I would imagine that the more mechanical players would take 5 minutes and feel mentally exhausted at that point.

I'm extremely interested in how things work on the table and why. I buy books and tapes study and them for any new insights or pointers. Even thought I don't usually think about this information while I'm playing I'm sure it's still there waiting to be useful. Imagine a feel player's game as a car going down the road. The body is the driver and the mind is sitting in the back seat giving directions. Sometimes the mind can be very helpful and the body takes the advice, but other times the mind turns into your mother-in-law and gets you lost.

The proper balance between mind and body for a feel player can be an elusive thing, but when that balance is there it's awful hard for a player to miss. Watch a good feel player when they're well balanced. When they do miss they get the most amazed look on their face. If Bustamante ever misses watch him - I'm sure he'll look amazed. More mechanical players, upon missing, aren't nearly as surprised - after all it could have been a hard shot, with lots of throw and squirt to contend with. In their minds they're already justifying the miss and trying to isolate the cause. A mechanical player will replay the shot in their mind, filing away all they can remember about the angle, speed, spin, etc in hopes of using that information the next time a similar shot comes up. A feel player will will just go "Hmmm. Overcut that ball. That was weird" and that's about it. Then the next time the feel player faces a similar shot, the mind will say something like "Don't cut this one so much", and the body takes it from there.

When any of my students (that's too formal - maybe protoge would be better, but I don't know how to spell it) reaches a point where they're sound mechanically but lacking consistency I give them a stack of photocopied pages from my various pool books with descriptions of throw, swell, and cling. I also throw in pages from Jack Koelher's book - the ones talking about margin of error on shots of varying length. Ron Shepard's excellent Pool Physics paper is added into the mix. Once I've given my student a feel for the multitude of factors that all need to be accounted for in making any given shot work, I point out even commiting all that information to memory is only part of the battle. You still need to make allowances for the speed of the table, condition of the balls, the levelness of the table and, depending on how picky you want to get, things like humidity, temperature, and the cue tip thickness can all contribute to the dozens (hundreds?) of things that need to go right for any particular shot.

So say you've got access to all this information - and a Cray supercomputer to perform your calculations for you - so now you know with absolute certainty where to hit the cue-ball, what direction to hit it in, and what speed to use to make the shot work. This information is still just another part of the battle. Now you've got to get your body to execute the shot perfectly. I don't know about you guys, but my body movements are just not that controllable.

So without access to a Cray you can't figure out how to shoot the shot. And without perfect body control you couldn't hit the exact spot anyway, so the questions becomes "What the fuck are you aiming at?" At this point I introduce my students to the be the ball, may the force be with you, Obi-wan Mosconi style of play. Some people, in all honesty, decide at that point that I'm a crackpot and look elsewhere for instruction. Others take my advice and invariably move there game up a notch or two. - and enjoy themselves more because it's not as mentally taxing to play by feel.

But I ramble.

The point I'm trying to make here is that all players - even the most mechanical ones (I have one in mind but she's got a lot of fans and I don't want to offend anyone) - have to play at least partly by feel. And if you're willing to give up any part of your game to feel, why not at least try the next logical step and give your entire physical game to the right side of your brain, and leave the left side in the back seat for a while? Remember, feel players do not stop thinking about what they're doing. They just have more separation between the conscious, analytical parts of their game and the physical part of their game. A mechanical player will consciously think about things like what tip placement will get my cue-ball to a certain point for a next shot. A feel player will just trust their body to move the cue-ball correctly. It's a beautiful thing when it works.

> while the FP's are held back by carelessness and too little
> knowledge.

I'd say that that statement is half true. Lack of knowledge is not what's holding me back. Carelessness is one of those words with too many meanings, but caring about each shot is definitely a problem for me at times.