Billiard Coach – Mike Fieldhammer

Happy New Year! Here’s a Tip.

Posted on 01. Jan, 2012 by Mike Fieldhammer.

Happy New Year!  Start your year with a tip. Or 31 of them. Once again, I’m attempting to blog every day in January to start the year off right. This year, resolve to play better pool and you’ll be rewarded by a sense of accomplishment and to quote a friend, “A chance to win tens and twenties of dollars!”

Below is a video I shot on my Canon 5D Mark II in my kitchen. As you’ll see, I’ve already removed the old tip, cleaned and prepared the gluing surfaces, and glued on the new Black Heart tip. All that remains now is to trip and shape the tip.

This end of the pool cue is where the ‘rubber hits the road’ or in pool parlance, ‘The tip hits the cue ball’. Don’t forget to chalk. Don’t forget to keep your cue tip in ship shape. I’ll revisit the subject later this month.

I’m still looking for ideas for this month’s instructional tips. Please contact me or post something on the forums (anonymously even!) to help me complete this series of 31 articles.

Thanks,

Mike Fieldhammer

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Recharge to Avoid Pool Burnout

Posted on 15. Dec, 2011 by Mike Fieldhammer.

Burnout: The dreaded risk of quitting pool due to overwhelming pressure and exhaustion of living the tough and stressful life of a pool player.

I’ve been playing lots of pool for more than twenty years and it has been my life for the past six years. Michael Reddick’s topic of “Recharging” is vital to my lifestyle so that I don’t get burned out.

Once upon a time, I read a book that was named or had the message “Work to live, not live to work.” The message was that once you quit working, you should have plenty of interests and hobbies to keep you busy. I guess there are people out there who don’t know what to do with their time once they retire. Pool is my job, but I cultivate plenty of other areas so that I don’t feel useless or lost while not playing pool. These pursuits also relax or excite me, thus recharging me for pool.

My recharging methods vary with situation and season. Summer, large tournament on the road, or the regular grind of being in my home town busy with lessons, leagues, and local tournaments.

Summer: During the summertime, I try to do some DIY projects around my house. This summer I repaired a segment of ruptured underground sprinkler tube amongst other maintenance chores. I hauled away a couple of truckloads of tree and bush clippings with the help of a pool teammate. This summer I spent some time visiting my family too. My folks are in Arizona during the winter, so I spent some time with them in Minnesota.

I still teach pool lessons through the summer, albeit a much lighter schedule. It’s still enough to keep me in pretty good stroke, but not at top gear.

This past summer it kind of backfired. I admit I was not at all prepared for the summertime Seminole event in Canton, OH. Jesse Engel and I drove out to Fiddlestix in one day and my performance was rusty and frustrating. Usually in the fall, I’ve got a couple of weeks of leagues and serious practice under my belt before the first important tournament. Now that I think about it, my trip to Ohio was doomed to fail.  I accept and learned from my mistake. The story still has a happy ending — the Monday spent riding roller coasters at Cedar Point on the way home was the most exciting day of my summer.

Big Tournament on the Road: One of the great things about traveling for tournaments is the opportunity and freedom to explore the area and do some site seeing. If possible, I try to arrive a day before a tournament to rest up. This is especially important if traveling takes more than half a day. Getting to the event with enough time to settle in, relax, and warm up on the equipment makes for a more enjoyable and usually more successful tournament outing. Think about it, if the whole ordeal of getting to and playing in a tournament is less hectic, it will certainly be less exhausting and easier to repeat in a week or in the next month. I also love staying behind an extra day or two. I enjoy watching (or preferably playing in) the finals and not having to frantically pack up and store baggage Sunday morning before matches begin. Even better, I’ve enjoyed some terrific tourism Monday or Tuesday after an event when the rest of the world is back to work.

 

Regular Grind in Minnesota:  My routine when I’m around home is pretty pool heavy. Taking breaks, no matter how brief, help me keep my energy and interest level in pool high. I’ll watch a film, listen to music, read, or even overclock my pc as an enjoyable respite from the pool player lifestyle. It’s funny, but just last week I started playing again with an old favorite cue of mine and I watched a good portion of snooker’s UK Championship. Both of these things strangely tweaked my interest in pool and recharged my spirit and enthusiasm. I guess sometimes a little hair of the dog is the best cure for burnout!

Mike Fieldhammer

 

Miscellaneous items that I am sure to have around to recharge my energy:

Crossword puzzles. A stack of them in my special clipboard.

Cooler and healthy snacks…vital for R&R in the hotel room or on the road.

Pillow—Must for good night’s sleep whether I’m home or away.

Listening to music. FLAC format please on my quality headphones.

A book or an audio book if driving.

Click this Host Link to read Michael’s into to this month’s Pool Synergy topic and to read other articles on the same topic:  http://angleofreflection.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/poolsynergy-december-2011/

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My Favorite Pool Tournament – Rugby North Dakota’s Northern Lights Shootout

Posted on 18. Nov, 2011 by Mike Fieldhammer.

This year is the 13th annual Northern Lights Shootout in Rugby, North Dakota. I’ve been to every one of them save the first. Robert Mattson brought me to my first one in 2000. This December 1-4 the Tournament Director will be yours truly. We’ll have a $50 entry 9-Ball warm up tournament that begins Thursday night at 7 pm and continue through the day Friday. There will be no cap on the number of entries in this event this year. We hope to pay out over $1,000 for first place! Not bad for a low entry preliminary event.

The 8-Ball main event will begin Friday night at 7 p.m. and entries must be paid by 6 p.m. that evening. Mail your entry to the Chamber of Commerce if you’d rather not stress about arriving by 6 o’clock. Weather and oil truck traffic are both unknowns in ND these days. If you absolutely can’t pay by mail and know you’ll be there in time to pay on site, please do me kindness and let me know to expect you.

This tournament, the town, and all the great people of Rugby and the players who attend are all very special to me. In particular, I’d like to thank my cue sponsor Samsara Cues. Perhaps one of the most underrated cue makers in the world, they’ve been in business 20 years! We’ll have some special shop tours and you’ll get to see the guts of cues ranging in price from $500 to $10,000.

Why should you come to the Northern Lights Shootout? I know pool tournaments have been dieing out and the number of players dwindling, but this event must be kept alive. Please pass the word and make an effort to attend. I’ve got a discussion thread in the Billiard Coach Forums that has a list of players that are coming. Add your name to the list and comment on some of your favorite things about this tournament.  I’m writing a special piece in this year’s program to thank Mark Hamilton and all the local volunteers for getting this small town event a big time reputation in a dozen years. Here’s to another dozen successful tournaments!

Please contact me to register or to answer any questions about the event.

Thank you,

Mike Fieldhammer

 

13th Annual Northern Lights Shootout

$5,000 Added

 

Rugby Armory — Rugby, North Dakota

 

9-Ball: December 1-2, 2011

Sign-up Deadline Thursday at 6pm

$50 Entry

Matches begin at 7 pm

 

8-Ball: December 2-4, 2011

Sign-up Deadline Friday at 6pm

Matches begin at 7 pm

Men’s Division $70 Entry

Race to 5 Alternate Break

Final 32: Calcutta, Redraw and Race to 6

Women’s Division $40 Entry

Race to 4 Double Elimination

 

Send Money Orders to:

Rugby Chamber of Commerce

Attn: Sharon Pfeifer

224 Highway 2 SW

Rugby, ND 58368

 

Hotel Rooms

Northern Lights Inn

701.776.5776

 

For more information please contact:

Mike Fieldhammer

 

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PoolSynergy: Thanks for the tip!

Posted on 15. Nov, 2011 by Mike Fieldhammer.

Check out Melinda’s introduction and links to all the thankful bloggers here.

Melinda is one of the most thankful people I know. She’s called upon the PoolSynergy faithful to write about something in the realm of pool that we’re thankful for. I brainstormed a quick list of more than a dozen items that sprang to mind, but each one deserves some solo attention and shouldn’t be lumped into one big list. So, there are plenty of things I’m thankful for this fall and here’s just one of them: Moori original layered tips.

Tip technology has come a long way in the last fifteen years. I remember my college days when I played more pool in the Augsburg game room than I did studying. My tip choice in those days were the ubiquitous Le Pro which was and still is a decent tip. Once every 6 weeks I’d use my poor college student’s lathe(my lap) to trip down a fresh tip. Some Le Pro’s lasted a little longer than others but they all mushroomed. My lap served as the platform for a spinning cue shaft several times a week to sand down the mushroom. Thankfully the Japanese introduced a game-changer about a dozen years ago. The layered pigskin cue tip named Moori. I stockpiled a bunch of M and MH tips back when they were boss. Now I change tips about every 8 months and mushrooming is a minor inconvenience just once. A week after I install a new tip I trim down the slight mushrooming and the tip is good for months.  Confidence in my tip and peace of mind is a key ingredient for me to play my best pool. Trusting in my tip is a good thing. Thanks!

Mike Fieldhammer

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