I waited to write a review until playing with it for a few months (around 3 times a week 6h total).
The first weeks/month it felt horrible, hard but not in a good way hard, just hard with the unpredictable extreme speed when you least expected it. In the beginning I also felt that it if I was just slightly off with my footwork I would get heavily punished by the rubber and not getting any engagement from it at all and a lot of ball slippage.
But as time passes the rubber softens up a little and am pleased to say that in my opinion this rubber plays very nice after having been broken in.
It has a much softer feeling while still being hard (I am a long time D09c player so used to the hardness) and I kind of like that, don’t know if that is the topsheet playing its part here and the pimples getting broken in as well?
It is now much more predictable and open ups against heavy backspin feels like a breeze to perform with power. There is the occasional ball slippage still but I guess that has to to with not engaging the top sheet as much as needed. Since coming from D09c and H3 before that I am a heavy brusher and I feel Zyre 03 requires a lot of brushing but a bit more direct engaging in the same time so a combination. Weirdly I find it not particularly spin sensitive but in the same time able to generate tons of spin, but it is hard to generate lots of spin without engaging sponge so passive shots don’t carry much spin and for serving you need to have good technique if you wanna serve short with lots of spin so it doesn’t travel long. I tested it on my stiga pure blade and the hardness of the rubber together with the characteristics of that 7-ply blade I think was a great combo.
Also after using it for a couple of months it really looks brand new still, durability seems to be top notch (if I remember I will get back and update here after a while more).
