"Obstacles are what you see when you’re not focusing on the target." Stop for a moment and think about it… Good. Hopefully some of you see my point with my statement. It’s possible to relate this to some other sports and even driving a car. I read in a motor magazine that if a driver stares at the white lines in the middle of a road, then he will automatically slowly inch the car closer to them. To compare it to other, more fun, aspects of life we can take Ice Hockey, Floorball or Football. When I played Football back in the 18th century, I was told to never look at the goalkeeper. Being both young and small, I never questioned my coach and just did as he said. I scored quite a lot of goals, but after a couple of years we actually had to do some cross-country running, which never have been my cup of tea. Some years later I employed the same technique in Floorball, again with pretty good success. During the latter parts of the 98/99 season, I had scored in every game, but against one of the worst teams in the division it all ended. Their goalie hade made one of the best mental manipulations I’ve ever seen. He had printed a gigantic Bulls Eye on the front of his shirt! It’s very hard to ignore a big flashy Bulls Eye. Needless to say, my shots weren’t even close to going in so I turn to passing instead. Thankfully we had players who just shot without aiming, so we manage to win despite of the clever keeper.
The point with all this is of course to learn to not see the physical obstacles, only the openings. The method goes almost hand in hand with the thinking that you should visualize the path of the ball in your head before making the shot. I have used both these versions during my career, but I like the no-obstacle version better. It cuts back on concentration time at the tee and for me it’s easier to control with my mind. With the visualization I have, when I’m not 100% focused, actually seen the shot miss, which is not really what you’d like your mind to portray.
More on obstacles, this time in a little more physical way. On felt I prefer to have small openings, preferably the smallest allowed, on most lanes. Örkelljunga, Gentleman and Möllbergsvagga would be exceptions to this for me as I see them as tempo lanes, and therefore you shouldn’t be heavily penalized if you miss the direction. But on straight lanes you should definitely have to pay if you don’t play the shot straight. I know that a lot of players would like the openings to be bigger so that you can play on the side of the hole with spin. I can think of two lanes, bridge and gate on a hill, where I can agree to this, but otherwise I don’t care much for the technical spin game. Not surprisingly since the spin shot is not what I’m really good at on felt. Straight and hard with an almost dead ball is my game! I must confess, however, that I’ve been forced to learn to play the other technical felt. I’m not very good at it when comparing to the two best in the game (Anders Olsson & Hans Olofsson), but if I were to have a rematch with both of the in Borås and Tuve I can guarantee I wouldn’t be those miles behind I were.
I must stress that on eternite I do in no way whatsoever encourage small openings. Eternite is a system built to be aced. Therefore, in my opinion, you should very seldom have a 10cm opening on any type of lane. There is a cannon (tube or whatever), passage, labyrinth and most of the times a gate and/or a window. All these lanes are difficult to pass through, especially the gate and window, even if they are not the minimum size.
This will be all on obstacles for the time being. Next time I’ll address some of the practice methods on felt that I have used during the years.
“If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something”.