I'll take the contrary position here, and say 'yes it can work...' but it really depends on the player in question, your playing style, the blades you choose, and the rubbers you team them with.
I preface what follows by confirming that using one common set-up with all your racquets, and practising a bigger range of skills more often with a coach, is always your best approach to improving your performance.
In some very rare cases however, this approach can actually sometimes fail you, for one reason or another.
That's when making equipment changes to support deficiencies in your game has the potential to assist you to varying degree -- it almost NEVER fully makes up for lack of regular practice, but it CAN still help you out substantively with being more competitive.
Little known fact: I take this exact approach myself quite regularly, but only through bitter necessity.
I've been working with a local coach to improve my game for about 3.5 years now, but its been a truly slow and frustrating process, due to my work. Apart from being aged over 50 now, I also have the issue of being far too busy to practice enough to improve.
But my biggest issue of all -- hands down -- is simply that I'm a blade maker. I'm constantly testing new blade models (and new blade/rubber combos) in my job for weeks at a time, all year round, come rain, hail or shine.
Working with so many diverse blades and rubbers gives me the skill to detect playing differences between blades better than most (if the rubbers are off), and it helps me diagnose faults, flaws or potential damage in a blade quite quickly.
Flip-side being, it also actively destabilises and degrades my sense of touch with my own regular personal set-up, as I never get the chance to grow fully accustomed to it for long.
Its an unavoidable consequence for me and others like me, that making blades means my own personal playing standards constantly suffer. If you were to ask Sergio the same question, I have no doubt he'd agree, and has experienced the exact same thing himself.
(Moral of the story: NEVER CHOP AND CHANGE YOUR GEAR TOO MUCH IF YOU WANT TO WIN!)
I get around this unique problem moderately successfully by using two *slightly* different set-ups in my serious matches (one that's speed + spin oriented, one that's spin + control oriented).
I'm a two-wing looper who loves to attack & counter on both wings. My game instinct is typically to favor power loops and drive-counters over slower loops and passive blocks or chop blocks. So logically enough, I prefer my own blades being on the quick-ish side.
Problem being, if I'm playing someone who's better at attacking than me, I usually need to reach deeper into my bag of tricks and vary my game a lot more. A slower, 'spin + control' set up really helps with this, as it makes dampening the other player's power a lot easier.
If you ARE going to go this way and try out two differing set-ups (against my own better advice of just practicing a wider range of skills more often), then IMO the trick lies in finding the exact right two blades, and the right rubber set-ups for you.
I'm lucky in that there's two blade models I make that are actually quite well suited to this technique. They have almost identical ply recipes, are are both fast and spinny blades in their own right, and both suit my regular game well. I also find being sneaky much easier and more successful with one of them than the other.
DO NOT try this though with one inner carbon and one outer carbon - that doesn't work in my experience as the difference is too profound.
Instead, maybe try out the following blade combos:
- two reasonably similar 5-ply all-woods,
- a 5-ply and a 7-ply all wood,
- a 7-ply all wood and an inner carbon
- or else two identical blades of any type, with identical rubbers on both (that also feature thicker/thinner sponge appropriately).
In closing, it bears repeating: consistency of equipment lies at the heart of consistency with your performance. Keeping to one stable set-up is super important if you're going to formally compete and play to win.
I however make and test very different blades regularly (a lot of them!) so my circumstances are different. By now I'm also about as used to wielding two different blades as a person can be.
For me, using two slightly dissimilar set ups is less of a big deal than it would be for others... yet my game still suffers hugely, due to lack of regular practice with consistent equipment.
You can be really good as a player, or you can be really good as a blade maker... but you can't be equally good at both -- they are mutually exclusive decisions.
I chose the latter path and I'm happy with my choice. But if your aim is to compete and win at the highest possible level you can, then its best to stick to one set up, and you can forget about making blades for a living. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤷
