How to Grip the Cue in Billiards

Proper grip of the cue stick is the basis of proper execution of most techniques in billiards. Here Roy Pastor how to grip your billiards cue correctly.

On behalf of TVLesson.com, this is Roy Pastor. I’m a BCA accredited advanced level instructor with BilliardAcademy.com. In this clip on beginner’s billiards, I’m going to show you how to grip. Now with the grip, you’re holding the cue with your dominant and this is one of the things that gives beginners the most trouble. First, let’s talk about where the grip should be. When we take a look at the tip of the pool stick, the tip of the pool stick is very close to the cue ball, you’re grip hand form should be about 90 degrees. This should be straight down, you’re hanging straight down your puppet, that’s where you should be holding the cue while the tip is nice and close. You should hold the grip nice and loose. Your wrist works as a hinge for your forearm. So you want to hold this nice and loose. Beginners get trouble with a grip that pulls it tight and they have tight knuckles. When that happens, everything moves around. So you want to have a nice loose grip and work it 90 degrees, work it as a hinge. Now, the grip is also—there’s a direct correlation between the distance of your bridge hand and the grip. When you move the grip hand back, you have to move the grip hand back. It’s always 90 degrees. No matter where you are, you have to put that grip hand at 90 degrees. That will give you a nice smooth stroke. Let’s take a look at what happens when you grip the cue stick too far up or too far back which is a common mistake. If you hold the cue stick too far up—take a look at my right hand. What is happening is that you take the pool stick and you end up pushing it in that stroke and you loose the stroke mechanism. If you hold the pool stick too far back, let’s take a look at my hand now. If I hold the pool stick too far back, what I’m doing is I have all these extra movement when I come forward. So we want to take that perpendicular and that makes a nice little movement. So you look for that perpendicular when you set up on your shot. Stay away from holding too far or too far back. And that’s how you grip a pool cue. On behalf of TVLesson.com, this is Roy Pastor. Thank you for watching.