The ICue is a practice ball training device for helping players visualize the tip contact point on the cue ball.
What you get with the iCue Practice Ball
The product ships with the practice ball itself, along with a very nice felt carrying bag and portable instructional booklet
The ICue Practice Ball
The ICue practice ball has very clearly, simple depictions of the various strike positions on the cueball.
The Instructional Booklet
The instructional book does a very good job of simply describing all of the strike positions on the cueball. This is literally the entire booklet. This should give you an indication of how simple the ICue practice ball is to use.
Using the ICue Practice Ball
Many instructional materials will advise the student to strike high or low on the cueball or indicate to put left or right english on the ball. However, there are more nuances than that and also those kinds of terms are quite subjective.
The ICue practice ball is designed to help players understand what these cue positions are very specifically, which allows instructors and/or students to have reference to help visually understand exactly where to strike the cueball to get the intended effect.
In this example, I am shooting a draw shot which should be struck with “low”. In other words, below center, and even more precisely, 6 o’clock.
You can see how easy it would be to instruct a student exactly where to strike the ball in this case. Or if you were a student yourself, reading instructional material, how easy it would be for you to translate that into exactly where to strike the cueball to practice what is being taught.
Now that you have a way to understand where to hit the cueball, the next question many players struggle with is whether or not you actually struck the cueball precisely where you were aiming for. This is an enormously important question and many players do not even realize, that even when they know where they want to strike the cueball, imperfections in their stroke or aim actually prevent them from hitting the cueball where they intended. As a result, they do not understand why they missed a particular shot or why their spin or draw didn’t work. The answer is….. they did not strike the cueball where they intended.
Fortunately, the ICue Practice ball can help you with that as well. Chalk your tip very well, then setup the ICue practice ball with the contact reference points facing you and stroke the shot as you normally would. Gently pick up the ICue ball after it stops rolling and take note of where the chalk mark is on the ball. This will tell you exactly where you actually struck the ball and help you to fine tune your stroke mechanic to the point where you are consistently striking the ball where you intend.
In this example below, I was attempting to put right hand english on the ball. In other words, 3 o’clock on the face of the ICue practice ball. You can see I did an OK job of striking the ball where I intended… I could probably do a bit better and I know how to adjust, striking a tad more up and to the right.
ICue Practice Ball Considerations
The only consideration I had was regarding efficiently and accurately setting up the iCue. My concern was that it could be tedious to do, particularly in repetitive practice sessions. If not done correctly, would totally defeat the purpose – and worse, could actually give you incorrect results and feedback. So care must be taken each time you set the ball up. Fortunately, the manufacturer provided me clarification on how use the iCue reference points to properly, and easily set it up.
The key to the setup is the vertical line running up through the 12. You setup this line 100% through the object ball. Using this as a reference should allow you to easily setup the iCue accurately throughout your practice sessions.
Bottom Line
I really like the ICue and highly recommend it as an instructional tool. Some pros use this as part of their video instruction and I can see why. It is very effective in conveying to their viewers how to shoot the shots they are demonstrating. As a matter of fact, I think this would be good for any instructor to include in their lesson plans for their students. And I think it is a good product for any player who wants to hone their skill in striking the cueball precisely where intended.
Striking the cueball where intended is a core building block of a player’s overall fundamentals and the ICue Practice Ball can really help players with this important aspect of their development and overall improvement in their game.
