Disclaimer! I dislike butterfly and their price policies and this is a very short and sweet story of me playing against someone with zyre for the first time.
It was a tournament and my opponent is quite lower ranked than me (maybe around 2100 USATT?), but not so much that I should utterly destroy him. He has long pimples on backhand and zyre on forehand, he tries to use forehand as much as possible (also because he knows playing pimples against me is assisted suicide 😝): I targeted zyre just to see how it reacts. He said he had been playing with it for some weeks.
I found zyre didn't do him any good against my service, or anywhere in the short game. He also struggled a lot lifting heavy long backspin, and when I mixed it up with no spin he would send it out 2 metres. On the few topspins he played in, the ball sometimes had an unusual amount of spin, sometimes normal. It surely looked like he had really little control on it. When I lifted the first ball with heavy topspin he would almost always block it directly out. He often looked at his rubber when getting it wrong.
His technique is not really sound if you compare it with very advanced amateur / semi-pro (or with correctly coached up and coming players who still have a lower level than him), but he is nevertheless a respectable player with 20-30 years of experience (he's around 50 y.o.) and who plays (the lowest) national league.
Do with this information what you wish, it gave me the impression that the rubber is only for a nieche of advanced players, and while it may work against same level - lower level opponents, it deepens the flaws and widens the gaps against opponents with a better command on spin.
