Billiard Coach – Mike Fieldhammer

Appearance Counts: Look and Feel Good for Success

Posted on 02. Jan, 2012 by Mike Fieldhammer.

Tip #2/31 for January, 2012.

The data has been crunched and verified. First impressions matter. Humans make subconscious decisions within seconds of meeting a new person. Your appearance and the way you carry yourself will affect your opponent. Arriving for an important match looking and feeling like a winner makes a difference. Small things like this can add up to cause an opponent to doubt their chances of winning against you. Your air and attitude portrays a confident and prepared persona. Professionalism. Think Ralf Souquet. Every time he removes his tip protectors, he’s unsheathing his doomsday machine. “Der Pool Queue des Schicksals.” Opponents and spectators know he means to be victorious.

In order to win, you must believe you can win. On some level, telling yourself you can do it pushes the mind in the direction of kinda believing that you can. “Fake it till you make it!” One of the thinks that helps me is belief in my equipment. I feel more confident in my abilities when I have confidence and pride in my pool cue. The new tip you’ve seen me shape in yesterday’s post is for my old Samsara Cue. Last month after running the 13th Annual Northern Lights Shootout, I returned home with this beauty which was getting a new wrap and refinish.

Well, getting this baby back last week was more emotional than I care to admit. I bought it five years ago and played with it for a couple of years. Then, I decided flying with it was too stressful. It sat at MSP unattended in the bottom of my duffel for a few hours when I didn’t make my connection in ATL. Well, my year of flipping through cues and shafts had taken a toll on my confidence and thus my performance. Now it is refinished, sporting a new wrap, and I couldn’t be happier.

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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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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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