What does the thickness of the rubber do?

So say that you can buy the rubber in 1.8, 2.0 and max. They are the thicknesses of the sponge . The thicker the rubber the faster it will be so max is the fastest but it will have least control. So 1.8 would be the slowest with best control. Max can vary for different rubbers. For example xiom vega japan MAX is 2.2mm however the allowed maximum I think is 4mm or something like that. so you would have to ask the manufacture

To clarify: 4mm is the total height allowd of sponge AND rubber thickness. The 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 thicknesses you usually encounter is the sponge thickness.

The sponge can go up to 2.5mm depends who it is by.

Liten said:

To clarify: 4mm is the total height allowd of sponge AND rubber thickness. The 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 thicknesses you usually encounter is the sponge thickness.

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This is the good info. 4mm is the maximum thickness allowed for sponge+topsheet. Thicker gets more spin, less speed when you try to slow down the ball because of the dampening effect you can use from the thicker sponge, but, on a bigger stroke, for someone who knows how to hold the ball on the sponge for that fraction of a second longer, the rebound of the thicker sponge can also make the thicker sponge faster on certain shots. This extra spin and extra pace when you swing harder and hold the ball on the rubber longer comes at a cost. For an advanced player the thicker sponge may afford more control. But for a less advanced player it definitely is harder to control.


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Sponges come in different types so the effect of sponge is not always exactly the same. Broadly speaking, you can think about sponges in general as being some combination of pillow and trampoline and their ultimate effect on spin especially depends on how they interact with the pips/topsheet. If sufficiently compressed, the sponge (if the right kind) can a trampoline effect. Sponge in general also allows the pips to continue to produce spin when you hit harder. If the sponge is too thin, then the spin production on harder loops/loop drives is easily capped as you will be hitting into the wood pretty easily if you don't brush thinly enough.

So for OX (no sponge), imagine using a bed with no mattress.
Remember that a mattress can have springs or can be purely foam (soft or hard). This is similar to many sponges.
If you have thicker mattress, you can bounce more on the mattress and feel okay (damping efect).
If the mattress is springy, then you have catapult (which is why in some cases, thicker sponge plays faster).
In general non-linearity of thicker sponge makes it harder to control for most beginners without training in spinning.

Now, NextLevel just gave the rest of the information. That is a top quality post. People should hit the like button on that. Sometimes I wish I could like a post twice instead of just once.


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basically, increased sponge increases dwell time and allows the sponge to absorb more energy all other things being constant.

On the booster thread I mention I bought about 6 sponges. If I stacked the sponges one on top of the other and dropped a TT ball on the stack from a constant height the pile of rubbers did not result in a higher bounce.

Sponge absorbs energy and returns a fraction of it to the ball. More sponge returns a lower percentage of energy to the ball therefore it reduces the COR. If the COR increased when the sponge thickness is increased it should be possible to increase the COR until it is above 1 which is impossible.

However, the fact that thicker sponge absorbs more energy allows the player to add more energy to the sponge even though a lower percentage is returned but more in an absolute sense.