OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Very interesting. A while back, I tried chopping a bit with a thin inverted rubber (some tackiness in 1.2, or something like that). So, do you think that might be a more comparable experience than playing with the S1?

So, I played the D3 in 1.5 yesterday, and here are some quick first impressions and how it compares to the S1 (the rubber I used before):

Chopping & Pushing:
Took a good 10 to 15 minutes to figure out how to push and chop with the rubber, as the ball came out at a much lower curve than from the S1, so most of it landed straight in the net. Once I got past that, I was pleasantly surprised with my pushes and chops, as it felt like could control them and vary them more compared to the S1 and keep them lower over the net. However, I think I'm able to generate slightly more spin on chops with the S1. There was something that I didn't figure out during the first practice though, which was how to chop really spinny topspins. The soft sponge and topsheet help out dealing with fast topspins but when they were loaded with spin instead of speed, the grippy topsheet made that a more difficult task. Those are easier to handle with the S1, as the topsheet reacts much less to spin, which also makes the serve return easier.

Blocking
Again, the softness of the rubber shines here. It was quite easy to block topspins when I was too close to the table to chop and it felt like I could redirect the ball with ease to wherever I wanted to place it. When it came to playing more aggressive blocks, punching through the ball, that felt more difficult to do than with the S1, again, I suspect mostly due to how spinsensitive one is compared to the other.

Preemptive conclusion
I liked it more than I expected but it's a big change from the S1, so I still need to adapt quite a bit, but there is some potential here. I will keep the D3 on for a couple of weeks and see how it goes and then might give an update.

Very useful comparison, thanks RGo!

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