What advice do you have for trying to prevent choking?
Think before you shoot. Don’t think when you shoot … just focus and execute. Also: breath, especially if you are nervous … in which case you should take several long, deep breaths before each shot. Also, trust your purposeful and well-practiced pre-shot routine. See:
Also, here is a good article from Joe Waldron discussing choking and how to prevent it:
Competitive Anxiety: How to avoid choke shots
Here’s another good article on the topic from Josh Kurzweil:
from Tanner Preuss (in Facebook post):
When the Nerves Show Up at the Tournament
Almost every player feels it at some point on the way to a tournament. Maybe it starts in the car on the drive over. Maybe it hits when you walk through the doors of the venue and hear the sound of balls breaking across the room. Maybe it shows up when you glance at the bracket and see the names of the players you might face later in the day.
Those nerves are a familiar companion in this game.
Your heart beats a little faster. Your mind begins thinking about the matches ahead. If you are playing singles, the responsibility feels personal. If you are part of a team, you might feel the added weight of wanting to perform well for the players beside you. The moment feels important and that importance can make the mind race before the first ball is even struck.
The key is remembering what those nerves actually mean.
They mean you care.
They mean you have invested time preparing for this moment. The hours of practice, the drills, the lessons, the matches that came before this one have all led to this day. The tournament is not something to fear. It is the stage where that preparation gets to show itself.
Instead of fighting the nerves, it helps to accept them as part of the experience. Nearly every player in the room is feeling something similar. The difference between those who settle in and those who struggle is not the presence of nerves, but how they respond to them.
The best response is simple.
Stay present.
When the mind starts drifting toward the future, bring it back to the table in front of you. The match will not be decided by what happens three racks from now or by who might be waiting in the next round. It will be decided by a series of small moments, one shot at a time… right now.
That is where your routine becomes valuable.
Your routine is the bridge between preparation and performance. It gives the mind something familiar to return to even when the environment feels chaotic. As long as you step into each shot the same way you practiced it, the game begins to slow down again. The noise fades. The pressure becomes manageable.
In those moments it helps to remember that you are not trying to prove anything to anyone. Your job is not to control the outcome of the entire tournament. Your job is simply to give your best effort to the one shot in front of you.
See the shot clearly. Step into your routine. Deliver the cue the way you practiced.
Then move on to the next one.
Tournaments are not won by the player who eliminates nerves completely. They are won by the player who learns how to compete while those nerves are present. When you accept the moment and trust the work you have already done, the pressure becomes less of an obstacle and more of a signal that something meaningful is happening.
You have prepared for this.
Now it is time to play.
from Tanner Preuss (in Facebook post):
The Trap of the “Easy Shot”
You walk around the table and see a shot that looks ‘simple’. The angle is friendly. The distance is short. It’s a shot you’ve made hundreds of times before. Somewhere in your mind the decision is already made. Of course… this ball is going in.
That assumption is where the wheels fell off.
Because the moment a player labels a shot as ‘easy’ the focus that normally accompanies a ‘difficult’ shot begins to fade. The routine shortens or is thrown out completely. The eyes don’t stay on the line quite as long. The body bends down into the stance with less intention because the brain has already decided the outcome.
The shot starts getting taken lightly before it’s ever taken seriously.
Ironically, the shots players fear the most often receive the greatest respect. When a shot looks difficult, players slow down. They check the line carefully. They commit to their routine. They deliver the stroke with attention and care. The focus rises to meet the challenge of the moment.
But when the shot looks simple, the opposite can happen.
The mind drifts ahead to the next ball. The player begins thinking about the position they want or the pattern they are about to run. The current shot becomes just a step in the process instead of the full moment that deserves complete attention.
The ball catches the jaw of the pocket. The cue ball drifts slightly off line. The shot that should have been routine suddenly becomes the turning point of the rack. The player walks back to their chair shaking their head because they know they make that shot almost every time.
The problem was never the difficulty of the shot.
The problem was the respect given to it.
Great players understand that there are no easy shots in competition. There are only shots that deserve full attention and shots that don’t get it. Every ball on the table requires the same level of commitment, the same routine, and the same clear focus.
When a player learns to approach all shots with the same discipline they use on ‘difficult’ ones, the game becomes far more consistent. The ‘simple’ shots stop being traps because they are no longer taken for granted.
In pool, the table doesn’t care which shots look easy.
It only responds to the ones you truly respect. PS – There are no ‘easy’ and no ‘hard’ shots.
from Tanner Preuss (in Facebook post):
The Difference Between Trusting Your Stroke and Forcing It
From the outside the two may look similar. The player gets down on the shot, takes a few warm up strokes and pulls the trigger. But inside the body and mind of the player – the experience is completely different.
Trusting your stroke feels automatic. The decision has already been made. The player sees the line, settles into the stance and allows the cue to move through the ball the same way it has thousands of times before. The stroke flows without interference. The player is simply letting the preparation do its work.
Forcing the stroke feels different from the very beginning.
It usually starts with the importance of the moment. Maybe it is hill-hill. Maybe it is the last ball of the rack. Maybe it is a shot that will decide whether the player stays in the tournament or goes home. Suddenly the mind begins trying to protect the outcome. The player wants the ball to go in so badly that they start trying to control the stroke itself. The grip tightens slightly. The backswing is rushed. The follow through has deceleration. Instead of letting the cue accelerate naturally through the cue ball, the player begins guiding it.
Ironically, the intention is usually good. The player is trying to make sure nothing goes wrong. But the game punishes that instinct. The more you try to control every inch of the cue during the final moment of the shot, the more tension you introduce into a movement that requires freedom.
The stroke that worked perfectly all day suddenly feels unfamiliar. The cue ball reacts slightly differently than expected. The player may still make the shot sometimes, but the smooth certainty that existed earlier in the match disappears…vanishes…gone.
Trusting the stroke comes from something deeper than confidence in the moment. It comes from repetition and preparation. When you have practiced the same delivery thousands of times, you begin to understand that the best thing you can do under pressure is get out of the way of your own mechanics.
The mind’s job is to choose the shot and commit to it. The body’s job is to deliver the cue the way it has been trained to do. When those two roles stay separate, the stroke remains smooth even when the moment becomes big.
The difficulty is that pressure tries to blend those roles together. The mind jumps in during the final second and attempts to manage the movement itself. That is where forcing the stroke begins.
Great players learn to recognize the feeling early. They notice the extra tension in the grip. They feel the hesitation during the warm up strokes. When that signal appears, they pause for a moment. They take a breath, step back and remind themselves that the shot only requires the same routine/discipline that worked on the previous shots.
The cue does not know whether the shot is for practice or for the tournament. It only responds to how it is delivered.
When the player trusts the stroke, the cue moves freely and the game feels simple again.
When the player tries to force it, the game suddenly becomes much harder than it needs to be.
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