Straight-In Lou wrote...
> My. First Smorg reappears, then Ghosst, Blackjack, and now Paul. Who've I
> missed? They're coming out of the woodwork, I tell ya.

Poking my head out of the woodwork long enough to contribute to this topic.
Below is from a conversation I had with Fred back in March. The important
part is the last paragraph. My game still hasn't recovered, but the memory
of those two days in February keeps me trying.

Forgive my whining:

Meanwhile, I suck. In the middle of February I lost my job and the next day
my sister found a lump in her breast. To keep my mind off these issues I
played pool. Some combination of my mood, lack of sleep, sore arm, etc.
combined to drop me into flat out no exaggeration top level pro mode. I had
made a slight, simple adjustment to my stance, one that I didn't pay much
attention to, that threw me into alignment like never before.

I was playing the ghost, getting ball in hand after the break, and stringing
5-packs together like it was nothing. Pool was fun fun FUN again. The next
day I went to The Bank Shot and was STILL playing like a pro. I was even
able to make what I call "one-pocket cuts" (thin long cuts while controlling
the cueball with speed and spin) with no effort, and beat a top local player
in one-pocket all day long, mostly by running out at every opportunity. The
guy wanted to take me to Oliver's (another pool room) and back me against
anyone there.

Then Truman Hogue came in and started practicing banks on another table.
Inspired, I started practicing my own banks and found that this new style of
mine wasn't suited to bank shots. I reverted back to the banks stroke I've
been developing for the past few months, thinking that the slight adjustment
I'd made to my regular stroke earlier would be easy to recall since I'd used
it for the past two days.

I was wrong. Way wrong. Whatever it was I'd done apparently wasn't as
simple as I'd thought, since I've spent the past month struggling (I mean
REALLY struggling) to run even one rack of nine ball. My magical alignment
is gone, and any attempt to manually align myself destroys my speed control.
I'm missing so many long straight in shots you'd never know I've been
shooting dozens of them as practice nearly every day for 15 years.

What I'd noticed about my magic stance was a slight opening of my right arm,
around the armpit. What I unfortunately failed to notice was things like
head position, bridge length, right shoulder tension, left arm position,
blah blah blah.

So I went from being one of the best players I've ever seen to a pretty
lousy banger overnight, just because I failed to properly take notice of
something really special that had happened with my game. You can bet that
if I ever get it back I'll damn sure pay attention then. I just hope it
doesn't take another 17 years.

My sister's lump turned out to be nothing