I am paraphrasing Bill Evans. Lightzy will know who I mean.
I do
)
It's the same for mastering any activity. At first you have to put a lot of thought into the tiny annoying things (for piano for example, with what order of fingers to play a certain passage), and then it becomes so natural that you never even have to think about it, and even if it's something you never played before, still your fingers will find the most natural fluid way to play it without you having to be conscious of it.
But that never happens if you don't spend a lot of time consciously, slowly, arranging your fingering on many passages beforehand. And again, with amateurs who never become pros, it is the same problem. Their technique is always slurred and stunted because of what I think is a lack of conscious, mindful effort.
The sad thing is that things only becomes hugely fun after you've done the hard conscious, technical work, because after you can 'forget' that, your mind is now free to concentrate on the actual music and creativity. So most people who play piano, excuse me for saying, don't even know how fun playing piano can be.
I figure it's the same with TT.
You can see how, if you're at a stage where you're just trying to put the ball on the table with some quality in a match, you're not yet at a level where your mind can be freed to really think about ball placement for example, and the game has no real art to it yet. After that it becomes even more fun than you can imagine!
Sorry for the longass post.