How rubbers' "Control" should be read?

UpSideDownCarl said:

When you feel that action of the ball sinking into the sponge while you are making deep brush contact, and that feeling when the topsheet distorts because the ball does not sink straight back into the sponge but sinks in tangentially (at an angle) that causes the topsheet to stretch sideways and distort as it grabs the ball....when you feel the distorted topsheet snap back on the rebound and how that creates, what gets called mechanical spin....well, for me that feeling of making the kind of contact that does that is kind of addictive.

Oh, say, is that the goon squad over there? Gotta go!

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I feel the same way. Its a big reason I dislike those paddles used in TTX, or anything that's difficult to spin with.

Baal said:

I have no memory of writing that. It must be fake news.

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This is interesting. You didn't write that. I am not sure how me quoting myself got changed in the software to me quoting you. But that is easy to change. I was just quoting part of my previous post.


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Suga D said:

Well explained, Carl.
Excellent!
I just would like to add in one tiny little correction.



The Nittaku Fastarc series is also produced by ESN.
Hence it makes me smile when people say that ESN rubbers are too bouncy and 'instead' prefer 'japanese' rubbers like the Fastarc.
[Emoji12]

I'm not talking bout you, but been reading these kind a statements every once in a while, so i thought some clarification could be helpful and necessary.

But as i said, all your other points are pretty much on point!
[Emoji2]

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Good info. Thanks. It has been long enough since I paid attention to who makes what rubbers that I did not realize FastArc was from ESN. When I tried P1 and S1, they felt pretty nice though.


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UpSideDownCarl said:

This is interesting. You didn't write that. I am not sure how me quoting myself got changed in the software to me quoting you. But that is easy to change. I was just quoting part of my previous post.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

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Had me worried.

Control is one of those many terms that is bandied about in our sport, like dwell time, and spin sensitivity (and even spin) that don't mean as much as they seem to, or they are inaccurate descriptions of a sensory impression. The problem is that there is no rigorous way of measuring any of it, so we end up with a lot of stuff like "my partner said my shots seemed spinnier" or "I could really feel the dwell" or "I had a hard time returning serve with this rubber". Control is the worst because there are so many things that we need to control to play well, and they don't all rely on the same properties of a rubber.

And a lot of it begs the issue that people's motor systems are capable of learning a lot. But that learning works best if the equipment is not changing constantly. And some equipment changes are kind of pointless. Really, switching from MX-P to something like Bluefire M1 (to name one example) is just not going to make you better even if the rubbers feel a little different.