Saturday I went to The Bank Shot for a while.

I've been playing very well at home and just wanted to see if I'd crumble against a real opponent.

I didn't.

I played this guy that I'd never seen before. We played 9-Ball and very early in the session I could tell two things:

1. I was nearly in dead stroke.
2. The guy was just out-matched.

I recall about three mental mistakes I made during the forty or so games we played. Those mental mistakes, along with the approximately four shots I missed, contributed to our final score being about 38-2. It really should have been 40-0.

Did I feel bad about beating the guy so badly? Not at all. Builds character.

I do wish the guy would have asked for some advice though as he had a few glaring problems.

He was relying entirely on his practice strokes to convince himself that he was aligned correctly. There was no attempt to step into the shot at all.

He was fighting the cueball on almost every shot. Using the path that the cueball wants to take may be tough to learn, but it's a vital skill to have.

After a while his attitude just disintegrated. He convinced himself that he was going to miss every halfway-tough shot and he very nearly did.