Thomas Keinath tests new plastic balls

cakezxc280 said:

I tried the DF 3 stars seamed balls last week.

First impressions: Serves have became much weaker in terms of spins, the ball sounds broken and it indeed stays in the air longer than the old balls.

I dont think the serves and returns are going to THAT big a part of the game as the guy said in the article but it certainly will play a factor because there are a number of ways to return serves other than chopping, pushing and the back hand flick that has became relatively easier to execute now than they were before and thus we should be seeing a lot more 2nd ball attacks now, rather than just the banana flick.

What struck me the most as to how the new ball impacts the game is the top spins and counter top spins.
As they do stay in the air longer due to their larger 40+mm size as opposed to the older 39.5~40mm I found it much easier to execute counter topspins and thus this means that we will see more forehand to forehand rallies.
This is both good and bad for me personally. On one hand my game is no longer bounded to the first 5 balls (used to heavily emphasize 3rd ball attacks after serves, as preached by my chinese coaches) and I can pull of exciting rallies one after another. Definitely a joy to both watch and play. However, with these continuous rallies becoming more common, its actually a lot more demanding to my stamina and I actually got a bit tired just after 3 games of BO5s. Guess I have to step up my stamina a bit hahaha....

However it is worth noticing that the ball actually falls downward faster than it would due to the slower speed it has and thus I had to add a bit of a pull upwards to my strokes to keep the ball from going under the net, and thats pretty hard to adjust to for me.

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