
This is one of the more difficult shots I've ever attempted to diagram. A lot of it, in terms of ball routes, is improvised. But the gist is that it was an amazing shot to witness, even if it was somewhat of a lucky roll. This is a shot my teammate Adam made a couple weeks ago during our final match of the winter league session. He was on stripes and his opponent had just played a safe off the 3 ball, leaving Adam blind on his 14. My teammate Josh and I were sort of muttering to one another about what we thought he should do. My idea was that Adam should go for the kick but do it softly so as not to break up the 14 and the 8, so that even if he didn't make contact it would be no big deal. Josh was thinking Adam should be more blatant about it and just pick up the cue ball and hand it to the other player. Adam declined a coach and went for it, missing his ball entirely and scratching into the nearby corner pocket. With ball in hand, his opponent played another safety, effectively giving Adam another chance at the same shot he had just taken. So Adam lined up the shot, hitting it fairly firmly as I recall. I can't remember if the 14 was frozen (I don't think it was) but the cue ball double-kissed off of it and then went two rails–again, hard to diagram from memory. The 14 went somewhere in the middle of the table. All I remember is watching the cue ball roll slowly back to rest more or less where the 14 had been a few seconds earlier. But it actually ended up closer to the 8, leaving his opponent in a far more difficult bind than Adam had been in. So with ball in hand Adam ran the table out to put us up two games to nothing. I had played a strong match earlier, defeating my opponent three games straight. Adam's win gave us the momentum to close it out, and we ended up taking the evening 3-2 in the fourth and final match (we only had four players for the whole night). It felt fantastic. Because not only did they have their entire roster present (playing on their home table, I might add) but they were the top-ranked team. We ended up not getting the postseason wildcard but we did end up with a winning season, 8-6.