When, on the crucial shot, you cannot pot the ball you make in practice.
In a match, you miss a ball you usually pot.
You know you can make it. Yet at that moment it is not the same.
In practice, it goes in normally.
In competition, something changes on the same shot.
Execution is not the same.
There is a small deviation in rhythm.
The movement is not as precise.
It is not a matter of confidence.
It is a matter of accumulated, recorded information.
Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theory shows that a sense of capability is not based on what you “believe”, but on what you have repeated consistently many times. The brain does not create trust through thought, but through experience. What you have done repeatedly and recorded is what it treats as a foundation.
Your shot under pressure does not show what you can do.
It shows what you do every day, in every expression of your life.
Confidence is not built. Evidence accumulates.
Practice does not happen only at the pool table.
When your words are measured and useful, and your movements purposeful and precise, your shot also becomes precise, controlled and repeatable in its result.
So practice does not begin and end at the pool table. It continues throughout all the hours you spend away from it. It is just as important as technical pool practice.
If you find this useful, keep it.
If not, move on.