Stiga is a European brand with a distinguished record in blade making; it is also very popular in Eastern Europe for its rubbers and there is a reason for this - they are top quality. Stiga offers just one LP (Destroyer) and one anti (Energy Absorber, available only in black, 1.6 or 2.0 mm). Both rubbers are remarkably durable (pips don't fall off a Destroyer, ever) and very effective if you know how to use them; they are also relatively alike in speed and spin. They seem to be designed after the classic Barna rubbers: suitable for classic defence, devious blocking, and disruptive attack. The Energy Absorber anti is in a class of its own when it comes to control combined with spin. Its sponge is medium hard, which means that balls that aren't caught at about 90 degrees won't penetrate much and will retain a great deal of their spin; at the same time the top-sheet is somewhat grippy, so a fast wristy chop will add to the incoming rotation. All in all the rubber is able to produce surprisingly heavy backspin on incoming topspin when used for chops. On incoming backspin it is possible, when pushing, to produce moderate backspin if your wrist-action is very fast, but the rubber is far more effective if it is used for flick-attack; due to its medium sponge it will reverse incoming backspin quite well into topspin and its realively high basic speed will make the attack venomous. Like the Destroyer it needs to be used actively, with lots of wrist-action (or the lack of it, for variation), and even on very slow blades it feels relatively fast, although not as fast as Chinese antis. Its control is second to none, though, which makes it easy to use after a few training-sessions.
_________________ Without opponent, no match.
|