OOAK Table Tennis Forum

EmRatThich's latest take on choosing equipment.



This covers a lot of ground, a lot of which is repeated on this forum again and again, but it collects it all in one place. As usual, he contrasts the European Way (hard blade, soft rubber) vs. the Chinese Way (soft blade, hard rubber), and tells you why the latter is better. In other words - All Wood Is Good, While Carbon Is Bad.. Especially for beginners. I suppose by "hard rubber" he's not just saying Hurricane, but harder Tensors should qualify as well. He advises against using soft rubbers, especially for beginners (apparently gives less control and leads to bad habits).

Not sure how consistent all this is.. A huge fraction (more than 50-60% at least) of European pros (and I'll bet a large portion of European club players) seem to use one rubber - Tenergy 05. Is this soft or hard?? A lot of them do use carbon blades. But Ma Long uses the arylate-carbon Hurricane Long 5 (this is definitely a very fast blade, albeit it's an "inner"), Zhang Jike uses another arylate-carbon, and I think Fang Bo uses yet another (assuming he uses his eponymous blade). Liu Shiwen's also moved to some sort of fiber blade I think. Then again, these are the top players in the world, what's good for them isn't necessarily what's good for us.

He also says the Chinese use hard rubber on both forehand and backhand, and it's true that several have switched to H3 on the backhand from T05, but then again.. you'll notice the sponge on the backhand is softer than on the forehand, and again.. it T05 "hard" or "soft"?

I like the fact that he quotes some stuff from this forum (about someone wasting 15 years... )

Iskandar

What??? You can't just throw a dart at an equipment list ??? Jeesh.

_________________
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Gambler All Rosewood
Aurus Soft / Gambler GXL .6 sponge

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My contention, though, is that you can, to some extent. Each of those categories (soft blades, hard blades, hard rubber, soft rubber) encompass dozens and dozens of blades and rubber sheets, and hundreds or thoudands of possible combos. Some degree of dart throwing will work, as long as you aim for certain large areas of the board.

I suppose those expensive hardwood-faced blades the Chinese pros like so much must fall under the "soft" category, though some of them are pretty fast (Ebenholz VII and the like).

Iskandar

...but da rubbahh feelsh deaduhhhh.....

Better dead "rubbah" than waste fifteen years..

Iskandar