OOAK Table Tennis Forum

So what is 'real' table tennis? Is it the table tennis that most of us play, governed by the ITTF, or is it the hardbat style where it originated from?

If hardbat is the 'real' table tennis, why don't they call it 'table tennis'?

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If we follow the ITTF's version of "real table tennis," the game today is already completely different than the one played when Adham's watch started.

The fact that hardbatters very often beat sponge players in head to head competition makes hardbat real enough up to about a 2000 level, I guess.

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My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

Every sport evolves, where as hardbat hasn't at all.... so is this the reason for the very small membership or are there other reasons?

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I suspect it is pretty "real" well beyond the 2000 level.

BTW, it is worth noting that about 90% of the the USATT players play below the 2000 level.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

Many sports haven't evolved much at all from an equipment standpoint. At the middle of the whole hardbat vs. sandwich rubber debate is the question of what is a reasonable limit. In 1959, they clearly seemed to think they need to impose limits. But why stop at 4mm sandwich? Why not allow 6mm or 8mm? Should be call 4mm limit advocated Luddites too?

Baseball doesn't allow non-wood bats. Tennis stopped spaghetti stringing. The question is whether or not table tennis should have stopped sponge and sandwich ... and it really isn't easily answerable.

The reason there are fewer hardbat players is probably not because of the lack of evolution per se. Most people tend to imitate the best players in their sport and follow the crowd. For instance, kids all over the world wear Air Jordans when any sneaker would do fine. And, of course, if you want to be an elite player, you'd better be using sponge on at least one side of your racket. But my bet is that for 90-95% of the rest of us, regular old hardbat rackets are either just as effective, or in many cases more effective. I think the typical player with a sandwich racket has insufficient control to take proper advantage of his carbon fortified blade and fast and spinny rubber. It is only when I watch matches played by 2000+ level players that I tend to see matches that aren't dominated by unforced errors. I think the vast majority of players are suffering from the effects of "progress." Or at least their wins and losses are.

While training for the Hardbat Classic, I switched from using inverted rubbers on a glass fiber blade to hardbat. My rating progressed from 1697 to 1921 in a matter of a few months after playing three rated tournaments. Now maybe it won't hold. It's hard to say. I'm always suspicious of rapid ratings improvements. But my impression is that today, I'm a tougher opponent than I was six months ago. And a lot of that is because I have better ball control. It is true that the gear I'm using is relatively simple and un-evolved. But my game is evolving much more rapidly as I use this simpler racket.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

I wonder what it will be like in another 20 years or so... which one will grow and which one won't??? I'd love to see both grow and ideally back together and united... but I think that's a pipe-dream

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Is inverted real table tennis? IMHO if inverted, and log pips were banned the game would become a lot more interesting and more fun to watch.

You may well be right, but I think not even the ITTF would survive such a proposal

it would be fun to see the inverted and long pip supporters standing united though

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Hardbat has evolved indeed, rubbers like BTY Orthodox are different from the Barna, and generally players use adapted "sponge" skills to play, because most of them are "sponge" players before being hardbat players. When you see Jean-Michel Carquin or Trevor Runyan playing, it's totally different from Barna or Bergman.

Hardbat in the sponge era is rather young out of the USA. In France, the first "official" tournament was played in 2004, now there are regular events in several regions, especially in the North and in Champagne. Most of the players are sponge players that are looking for other sensations, generally they play only one or two tournaments a year, except a few ones like me, who are ready to drive through France and even Europe to play hardbat.
IMO, hardbat is going to grow in the next years, partly because of the many changes of the table tennis rules (no more speed glue, no boosters...) that discourage a lot of players. For them, hardbat is paradoxically a way to find again the pleasure to play, because they don't have to think about what new rubber to buy to play faster and with more spin, here everyone plays without sponge, and the material is much less important than in sponge play. In France, we'll have more than 700 players in our Hardbat ranking, and we hope to have more than 1000 in August 2010.

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Hardbat France, the first French association to promote hardbat
http://www.hardbat-france.fr/

ive never heard of hardbat

I don't want to get into a debate about what constitutes real table tennis but I think hard-bat, inverted, pips out and even sand-paper or liha is table tennis in my book. I have never played hard-bat or liha but I would love to given the opportunity since it is just another way to have fun with the sport I love so much. I actually have two old blades, premade that I have removed the rubbers from and have sanded them down to clean the glue and sponge residue and I intend to turn them into sandpaper rackets to try out.
But if I did try and figure out if any one form was real table tennis, hmmmmm. I don't know, they are all in my opinion variants that should be encouraged because they are all essential to how rich and varied this sport is.

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I agree with Ranger, I think they're all different versions of "real" table tennis. They're all fun to play and can be played at very high levels.

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