He cannot spin at the moment but he can chop and push with his backhand and forhand on the table. His trainer sugested us to use a wooden off blade to start get used to play with an off blade.
I asked a few people and they advised me to buy stiga clipper cr...
regards
Clipper is a good blade but it is pretty fast and does not have so much dwell time so it is harder to learn to spin loops with it than with a slightly slower blade. But, it is a good blade and I believe that it is one blade that they use for training children in China (perhaps these children are older than 9 though).
Since this thread was first posted I have been talking to two friends of mine who are pros and coaches who grew up in Europe and were on teams in Europe. Both of them, even though they are from different countries game me the same information. For a player trying to develop offensive skills they should use a blade that is all wood, no composite materials like Carbon. The blade's speed should be Off- or All+, not faster than Off-. And the rubbers should be on the soft side for more control and spin.
Independently of each other, they both said that when they were growing up, and they were on the children's national teams of their country (one of them was a multiple time children's national champion), that the coach from their team simply told them exactly what racket and rubbers they were to use and it was not an issue of shopping around for the right setup. The coach said, this is what you use, and gave them the racket setup. Invariably it was blades like the Butterfly Primorac Off- blade with rubbers like Sriver FX. Very simple. Butterfly Jonyer Hinoki is another blade in that category, but I don't think they make this one any more. The new Jonyer Hinoki Special is a little too fast for a developing player.
Again, I am not really sure reasons your son's coach has for this choice and it might be one that is based on some aspect of his game, and I am also not sure what level your coach is, but this information came from two players who, if they had pursued playing would probably have been on their national teams and playing on the ITTF pro tour. And that is what both of them said.
I had been playing with a Clipper and they were not advising me on changing my setup. They thought it was fine for me. But, in talking to them about the reasons why a player who is not pretty close to the level of a pro should not use such a fast blade, I decided to change my setup and use a slower blade.
I am not sure how many of you out there understand the USATT rating system, so I will provide some information. I will start from the top down. The highest USATT rating belongs to Kong Linghui and it is 2911. Wang Liqin is 2907. They got these ratings when they played in a USATT sanctioned tournament in the USA. So it does not really indicate their actual level. I merely indicates that they were so good that nobody who already had a USATT rating could do much of anything against them.
The rating that Waldner got in 2004 when he was clearly older was: 2870. In 2005 Samsonov got a 2868 rating.
The current rating of the men's player from the US who went to the olympics is 2581. My guess, his world ranking would be somewhere around 400 in the world. Give or take 200 points.
Biljana "Biba" Golic is rated 2321. Biba is the KillerSpin poster girl.
Ariel Hsing who went to the Olympics for the US women's team has a rating of 2538. She might be able to make into the top 50 of the women's rankings.
An expert amateur players is said to be around 2000. What I notice is that a player around 2000 is, in many ways, very good, but they still are missing certain fundamental technique things. They can still look like an awkward amateur when playing certain kinds of trick players with pips rubbers. At around 2200 a player starts looking solid fundamentally and does not lose their form even when playing someone with a very awkward unconventional style. Most players in the USA if they had a rating would be somewhere between 300-1900. There are many players in the US who think they are good but if they had a rating would be around 1000.
Now, what is all this info for?
One of my friends who I am talking about said that an offensive player under 2200-2300 should not use a blade faster than Off-, and that the blade should be all wood, and that they should use rubbers that allow for good control to develop, touch, feeling, spin, and good strokes. That, with a faster blade, the risk is, that because the ball does not stay on the blade as long, and because it is harder to feel the ball on the blade, you do not develop the feeling for the ball while it is on your racket that you should. And because the blade is faster a player might compromise their stroke and not take a full stroke and not follow through properly because they are trying to get the ball on the table with a blade that causes the ball to fly without them needing to put the effort of a full stoke in. The stroke can be compact and full at the same time. But with an Off rated blade, often a lower rated player who does not already have top flight mechanics, whill get in the habit of cutting off the followthrough and developing hitches in the mechanics of their stroke as a result of the speed of the blade.
