Red Flags - They're Trying to Tell Me Something But What?

Last week was a setback in my pool playing.

I played terrible, I knew I was playing terrible and I just couldn't do a thing about it.  Horrifying.

And like most instances where I sense that I am struggling sometimes the results don't reflect that.

But there are always red flags and they were telling me something was very wrong.

My week started with a combination APA Masters league and APA 8-Ball league that I play on Wednesday night.  Two leagues, same night, same building.

I won my Masters match 7-0.  All is well with the world, right?  No.

I played poorly and was just lucky.  And I knew it.

Next up 8-Ball where I won my match 5-1.

A guy who wins matches 7-0 and 5-1 can't be playing poorly certainly.  Except, yes he can.

There were red flags.  Plenty of them.  More on that later.

So we come to Thursday night where I played two matches of BCA Masters 8-Ball.  A regular match and a make-up match from the first week of the session.

In the regular match I broke and ran the first rack in crazy out of line, out of sorts fashion against an excellent player.  And then the wheels shot off.  As they were bound to.

I lost the next four games dogging my brains out at every turn and just playing like a chump against more excellent players.

On to the make-up match where I played slightly better (3-2) against excellent players again but still something wasn't right.

Red flags.

For me I have three proven indicators that I am off.

1) Balls I miss fly around and go into other pockets (literally NEVER happens if I am right)
2) I constantly barely hook myself on position shots that require touch
3) I scratch anywhere and everywhere

Sometimes it is just one of these red flags and sometimes, like this last week, it is all of them.

When these things start to pop up in my game I know I am in trouble and I go through all the normal routines of checking fundamentals, taking extra time, etc.

But last week it didn't work.

Staying down on the ball helped some of it, but not all.

The red flags were trying to tell me something and I just couldn't figure out what.

So Sunday I consciously worked on staying down, level stroke, eye pattern and many other things but nothing really improved...  I just got more and more frustrated.

I then got to thinking that I might be doing myself more harm trying to push though a bad spell when it clearly wasn't working.  Would I just ingrain a bad habit I couldn't recognize by continuing to play?

So I walked away and I won't play again until this Wednesday.

In the past I have always snapped out of slumps like this and played really well coming out them.

Here's hoping that's what's going to happen here as well.

I just hope my red flags are a little more clear in communicating with me in the future and I am a little more diligent in figuring out what it is they are trying to say.