Open Mike I: My Pool Lesson with Jerry Briesath

Driving to Madison through a downpour:
Gloom and doom, sturm und drang.

Driving home after my lesson:
Sweetness and light, and downhill all the way!

Seems like I've been playing hookey a lot recently. A couple of days ago I did it again: I took my trusty Sony NEX-6 and my trusty (well...) J. Pechauer cue and drove to a club called The Brass Ring in Madison for, of all things, a pool lesson.

Normally, instructor Jerry Briesath's students fly in from all parts of the country for three day-long one-on-one sessions with him. As befitting my lowly status as a second-time-around beginner, I drove in for one day-long lesson. (I figure I'll add the other two days as finances allow. It's not a very long drive.)

So how was it? Permit me a metaphor.

You're hiking, and come across a hole in the hillside. You crawl in. To your surprise, you find it's a cave. You explore a little further. It gets a little bigger. By the time you can stand up, the light has faded to almost nothing, so you're exploring very slowly and carefully in the dark. You feel your way step by careful step, groping along the rock walls.

You're thinking, this ain't so much fun. Maybe I'd better bail.

Suddenly, floodlights come on. Before your astonished eyes is a vast fantasical cavern with stalagmites and stalagtites and torrents of crystals embedded in rock walls that shimmer with a thousand mineral colors. There are sub-caverns and grottos and dark recesses and rivulets springing out of the rocks into deep bell-clear pools rimed with sulphur, and there are clouds of sleeping bats and white albino snakes and...

...Over to one side is a friendly, smiling gentleman named Jerry saying, "Oh, and over here...."

That's what it was like.

Well, maybe I exaggerate. A little. Bottom line: it turns out there is much, much more to this than I thought there was.

The Brass Ring is a beautiful restaurant / bar / pool hall in Madison,
Wisconsin. The tables are 9' Diamond Professionals, currently
considered the ne plus ultra among connoisseurs.

Jerry is famous in pool circles as one of the best instructors in America. Unusually, he's been teaching pool for 50 years (cue sports teachers have never been very common, but they were less common 50 years ago). From all I've heard from anyone, he has a reputation within the game that's solid gold.

You know those few-and-far-between teachers you've had who just seem born to teach? One of the best for me was Beth Sieckman, who taught me 7th grade oceanography and 8th-grade paleontology, although I was fortunate to have more than a handful of great schoolteachers in my time. They're people who just have a gift for making complicated subjects simple, meeting students where they are and opening their eyes. Mrs. Sieckman would have glowed just as brightly as a teacher had her passion happened to be Mozart or motorcycle maintenance; she just had the gift. She taught me the discipline of writing, for one thing, more than any English teacher I ever had (and I had some fine ones). I get the feeling Jerry Briesath is cut from the same cloth—the only difference is that he teaches his passion, and that is pool.

And let's face it, there's just nothing more fun for a student, any student, than struggling and struggling to understand something and just not getting it, and then having a gifted teacher come along and turn on that lightbulb over your head! I had not one, but five or six of those moments on Friday. Absolutely the most fun I've had in ages. When Jerry showed me how to play position for six different balls around the table from the same shot, and I did it myself, I was grinning like a kid. Couldn't help myself.

One more example: If you've ever played pool, you probably know what a "hanger" is—it's a ball that's hanging right near lip of the pocket, those annoying shots on which casual players often scratch. Well, it turns out there's a whole encylclopedia of "hanger knowledge." (Who knew?) Not just how not to scratch, but how to change the angle of the shot and the direction of the cue ball after hitting a hanger in a myriad different ways—even how to "cheat the pocket" to affect the speed of the cue ball after the hit by 10X. Applied physics; totally fascinating.

While I take a break, Jerry answers a question from a former student and his friends at another table. As the owner of two Madison pool rooms for many years, Jerry was his own "house pro," and says that was the most challenging kind of teaching—finding a way to increase peoples' enjoyment of the game in just a few short minutes.

He really makes me think that I should start a "photo school" series here on TOP, and try to impart what I know about getting better at shooting. Contrary to what you might think, I've never really done that here on TOP, except perhaps with my "Leica for a year" post.

The give-and-take
Hard to know for sure from just one meeting, but I suspect Jerry is a "people person." I know his famous DVD set, which you can get from his website, is well thought of (and for me it's going to be great for review), but I think there's just a huge benefit in the give-and-take of a one-on-one lesson. To get a guy who's taught thousands of people to look at me and analyze my stroke and tell me what I'm doing wrong is something I can't get from a tape. (Turned out my stroke didn't have some of the common flaws, but did have a couple of others I just wasn't aware of.)

Well, I won't go on and on. Suffice it to say that I almost didn't do this. I played pool for five of my teenage years with my more coordinated younger brother (hi, Scott!), and then just recently took it up again on doctor's orders*. I'm a neophyte, and I originally considered it both presumptuous and indulgent on my own part to sign up for a lesson. But boy, am I ever glad I did. I just didn't know there was so much to learn**. Those "lightbulb experiences" are just so much fun. I've already signed up for lesson #2, later in August***.

Jerry Briesath at the Brass Ring, Madison, Wisconsin. He teaches in Phoenix in the winters, but most of his students fly in from all sorts of places.

Anyway, Friday was a great day for me. (Fittingly, the skies outside even cleared during the four hours we were inside.) It was really ten times better than I thought it would be, and to say I'm enthused is an understatement. Many thanks to Jerry for a great experience.

Mike

P.S. Should you want a lesson yourself, call him: (608) 279-9994. Tell him your heard it on TOP. [Disclaimer: I never met Jerry before two days ago and I get not a penny if you buy a lesson. I'm just another happy student.]

*My doctor said I absolutely had to stop sitting at the computer for such long stretches of time and get up and move every couple of hours, so I cleared a corner of the basement and put a used pool table in it. And it has worked already: for years I've been plagued by neck pain, not terribly serious but chronic, and it's been gone for weeks now. That alone is worth everything I've done so far.

**Really, I had no idea.

**Chris Norris said he almost stopped in at the Brass Ring to see me when he heard I'd be there, since he lives down the street from the place. Next time I'm there I'll alert people, and anyone who'd like to show up after my lesson can come on by and say hello.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

dan meyers: "Yikes, Mike! You're photographing while driving in poor weather, not what I would expect."

Mike replies: Don't worry, Dan, I wasn't looking at or through the camera. Just holding it up and clicking away, eyes on the road the whole time. I took something like 40 shots in three batches to get that one. I don't have to look at my camera at all to turn it on and click away.

Wasn't so successful with the "good weather" shot later...I should have stopped, but I needed to get home to let the dog out. But no unsafe practices in either case, promise. Actually, it was harder to grab the few shots I took during the pool lesson! [UPDATE: See follow-up post two posts above this one.]

Kevin Bourque: "I had some similar "lights on" moments when I did a Howard Bond workshop some years ago. He didn't have any magical chemicals and my gear was every bit as good as his. He just showed me some very practical tricks, and more importantly, gave me new ways to think about what I was doing. We're never too old to learn, eh? Makes we wonder what else I might be good at.  ;-) "

Mike replies: It's been a while since I talked to Howard—I really should remedy that. I will say that never taking a photo workshop is one of my great regrets in photography. I was teaching before I even got out of school, and somehow I skipped that phase. I really wish I had taken two or three workshops with teachers whose work I liked and admired during the appropriate phase of my involvement.

Jay Tunkel: "One of life's hardest lessons: You don't know what you don't know."

Chaz L: "Congratulations, Mike, you're learning from one of the very best! I've had the occasional itch to take a lesson from Jerry, but the prospect of flying in for three days always deterred me. If I was within driving distance, it would be a no-brainer. Enjoy applying your new knowledge on the table."

Comments

[Bron]

"He really makes me think that I should start a "photo school" series here on TOP, and try to impart what I know about getting better at shooting."

An advantage, for me, about "teaching" from a blog, is each post can be very tightly focused. People can "study" just the parts they are ready for. As a teacher in a group I had a very hard time recognizing that a skill or technique that was for me, second nature, was not always so evident to the student.

And, I too feel blessed that I sometimes had a very good teacher. One of the reasons I pass knowledge on.

[Joe Holmes]

Wait a minute, it's a downpour, you're speeding down the highway, windshield wipers going like mad, a car passing you on the right, and you want to show us that you're driving with one hand and taking a photo with the other? Drop me off at the next rest stop please.

[Pete F]

I cast a vote for the photo school series

[Speed]

Your "intro" reads like a promo for a video game.

Mozart and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sounds a lot more interesting than that Zen one was.

[Jeff]

One of the best 'casual' pool players I ever met was a friend during my grad school days at Madison in the early 70's. He had a leg amputated in Vietnam, and subsequently spent many hours in a downtown Madison bar that had a table. Once he got his turn, others put their quarters down for the next place in line, but he remained there for hours on end. I enjoyed watching the cue ball, on most occasions, perfectly lined up for each next shot...and positioned for several more.

I never heard of Jerry, but now I wonder if my friend had a connection.

[Karl]

Mike, there's a guy in your neck of the woods- Racine- who's worth seeing if you like characters. His name is Frank Stellman, aka "Sailor" and he's a teacher and cue-maker who has been around long enough to have personal stories about Mosconi and some of the greats of the game. He was one of the top players of his time in 14:1 straight pool and 9 ball, and has mentored more than one top player. And he's an avid photographer with photos lining the walls of his storefront space that's a bit of time capsule.

[Tschotsch]

"Driving to Madison through a downpour: Gloom and doom, sturm und drang."

I hate to rain in on your parade (pun intended), but "Sturm und Drang" does not work in this situation.
As a matter of fact, "Sturm und Drang" always has to do with people and/or large crowds. The german word "Drang" as a noun (Der Drang, masculine), translates into a necessity, an urge, a compulsion or even an aspiration. As a verb it becomes Drängen (Das Drängen, das gedränge, drängeln) it translates into pushing, shoving, coaxing, edging.

Although "Sturm" (Der Sturm, masculine) does literally mean storm as in describing an extreme weather situation, in the case of "Sturm und Drang", however, it rather describes the rushing of, or the rather swiftly moving of a large crowd of people heading/being somewhere at the same time. Literally storming towards a destination.This could be a sporting event, a rock concert, rush hour or even a large number of people in an extreme situation, rushing towards an emergency exit or into life boats. In this phrase, there is a hint, but only a hint of disregard for others, the recklessness of large masses of people, a possible stretching of human decency, an unwanted, unwelcome, unpleasant situation or experience.

There is no quick translation such as Doom and Gloom, but if I had to give a rough and dirty one, it would be, the rushing and the pushing!

Cheers
–George

[Thanks George! Very interesting. I know it only as the name for the pre-Romantic movement in German literature and music from the 1770s. It's usually translated here as "storm and stress."

I learned about it from Trevor Pinnock's traversal of the middle symphonies of Haydn, which are sometimes called the "Sturm und Drang Symphonies." --Mike]