Thursday, October 27, 2016

Sly Video Capturing of Good Player

One thing I'm trying to do on the Omega Tour is to do a video compilation of matches/shots during a tour stop and then putting it all together into one little youtube video.  Here's an example video compilation from the Omega stop in September.

Obviously, I have to be careful when I'm taking video.  I stand there and I hold up my phone and I'm trying to ensure that the players don't see me, but sometimes they do.  I sometimes feel like I affect their play so I've been trying to videotape people in such a way that hopefully they don't see me or maybe they think I'm just taking a picture with my phone (which is less distracting than realizing you might be video-taped).

During the October stop I was videotaping a good player and he was on the ball before the 9 ball.  I am trying to take the video and a couple people next to me make remarks that I am sharking him.  The guy next to me joked, "I can't believe you're doing that while he's shooting - it's a pretty tough shot."  And I replied softly, "well I know this player really well and he's not gonna let anything bother him if he's distracted.  He will back off of the shot and prepare his pre-shot routine before getting back down on the shot.  He only shoots when he's 100% dedicated and prepared."

The shot was a very sweet shot actually and glad I captured it on video.  Then I found out he was on the hill and that's scary I could have distracted that key moment!  Yikes.

I asked the player afterwards if he saw me.  He replied, "yes, I noticed you standing there with your phone, but because you were not moving around, it didn't distract me and that allowed me to just focus on the shot."

Here is the video I captured of him (Mike Voelkering):

You can see he did indeed get back up before he felt comfortable about the shot.  He's a very disciplined player (we can all learn from this! - get back up off the shot if you don't feel prepared or 100% committed):

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