What does "control" mean?

fais · Oct 23, 2019

How does one measure control when it comes to TT blades/rubbers? I understand high throw v. low throw, gears, and linear, tensor/ESN (are tensor rubbers be linear?), but what exactly is control?

Does it mean the rubber is less reactive to speed and spin, allowing one to be less precise in placing the ball where one desires? Or does it mean something completely different...

Hamasaki_Fanz · Oct 23, 2019

fais said:
How does one measure control when it comes to TT blades/rubbers? I understand high throw v. low throw, gears, and linear, tensor/ESN (are tensor rubbers be linear?), but what exactly is control?

Does it mean the rubber is less reactive to speed and spin, allowing one to be less precise in placing the ball where one desires? Or does it mean something completely different...

wtf, I thought you've played long enough to understand 'control'.

Control is basically the confidence the equipment give when you hit the ball.
You can gain this confidence when your equipment can give feedback (hence we'll achieve what people call 'feeling').

Generally, equipment that can hold the ball longer when you hit, provides more control as you will have enough feedback and therefore confidently strike the ball.

Imagine playing with all wood limba vs playing with zlc hinoki. Zlc hinoki will just bounce and kick the ball the moment you strike the ball. Or more extreme, imagine playing with a blade with no sponge/rubber. The ball will just bounce and you cant even feel how much spin/speed is on the ball.

Der_Echte · Oct 23, 2019

Control can be looked at as the easiness that you can do something.

Obviously, a property of equipment that makes it easy to do a certain thing does not automatically make it do another thing.

Grippy tipsheet with a dynamic sponge in the right firmness for a player increase control in most topspin shots, but not likely drives.

An OFF++ solid bat is great for drives and smashing, maybe loop driving, but crap for opening loops.

Defining what is control and what shot we are considering are important things.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Baal · Oct 23, 2019

It's a good question. Control of what? Short game and serve return? Blocks? Landing loops on the table? Is it simply the inverse of speed or is their more to it? And how do you measure it in any sort of objective way? It's a term that people throw out without any way of quantifying it. All in all I think it's pretty useless without being more specific.

Kuba Hajto · Oct 23, 2019

The problem with control as some you described is that it is not a parameter of only a blade or rubber. I would even call it a function of skill and experience. For me the higher the control the higher is confidence in placing your shot exactly where you want on the table.

In other words for me. The higher the control the easier it so to play with that particular piece of equipment for a non experienced nor skillful player.

Airoc · Oct 23, 2019

Der_Echte said:
Control can be looked at as the easiness that you can do something.

...

Defining what is control and what shot we are considering are important things.

I guess that sums it up.

The simple linear relation to speed that blade manufacturers stick to isn´t really a good model.

Lula · Oct 24, 2019

I think this is pretty subjective aswell. I am trying an allwood blade at the moment. I used to play with Timo boll ZLC which is a carbon blade. My experience is that i feel like i have less control with the all wood. Or maybe i am not used to it. Will try the carbon blade tomorrow again. Feel like the allwood blade is much more bouncy all the time, even if i do slow shots like a block, push or soft loop the ball still bounce alot and much upward aswell. The carbon blade feel more hard and stiff so i feel that i have more control when i just want to play a slow shot as those just mentioned because it feels like the ball bounce less. Maybe it is that the ball bounce more foreward?

But i do feel that since the carbon blade is harder i am forced to be more active myself on slower shots and maybe this forces me to have to be to active so i loose control and safety from this? I also experience it is more difficult to open against backspin, where the higher arc of the all woos gives me more margin for error.

I am very surprised with how i experienced the all wood, but maybe i need to get use to it? or maybe there are different types of control? also feel that i have less control with ALC because the ball bounces more by itself and the throw is very high. Anyone with knowledge that can explain what is really happening? lost here haha

Baal · Oct 24, 2019

All equipment choices are trade-offs. A rubber/blade may improve your execution of one phase of the game but make another phase more challenging. That fact relates a bit to what Kuba Hajto said.

Der_Echte · Oct 24, 2019

Lula said:
I think this is pretty subjective aswell. I am trying an allwood blade at the moment. I used to play with Timo boll ZLC which is a carbon blade. My experience is that i feel like i have less control with the all wood. Or maybe i am not used to it. Will try the carbon blade tomorrow again. Feel like the allwood blade is much more bouncy all the time, even if i do slow shots like a block, push or soft loop the ball still bounce alot and much upward aswell. The carbon blade feel more hard and stiff so i feel that i have more control when i just want to play a slow shot as those just mentioned because it feels like the ball bounce less. Maybe it is that the ball bounce more foreward?

But i do feel that since the carbon blade is harder i am forced to be more active myself on slower shots and maybe this forces me to have to be to active so i loose control and safety from this? I also experience it is more difficult to open against backspin, where the higher arc of the all woos gives me more margin for error.

I am very surprised with how i experienced the all wood, but maybe i need to get use to it? or maybe there are different types of control? also feel that i have less control with ALC because the ball bounces more by itself and the throw is very high. Anyone with knowledge that can explain what is really happening? lost here haha

We have seen some video footage of you, enough to know that you are a hard striking lower spin drive hitting kind of player.

The hard, solid, fast blades work great for that. A flexy wood blade would comparatively suck major rocks for that task except to counter hit incoming topspin balls that are a little high. Your observations are not crazy or weird at all.

lasta · Oct 24, 2019

Lula said:
I think this is pretty subjective aswell. I am trying an allwood blade at the moment. I used to play with Timo boll ZLC which is a carbon blade. My experience is that i feel like i have less control with the all wood. Or maybe i am not used to it. Will try the carbon blade tomorrow again. Feel like the allwood blade is much more bouncy all the time, even if i do slow shots like a block, push or soft loop the ball still bounce alot and much upward aswell. The carbon blade feel more hard and stiff so i feel that i have more control when i just want to play a slow shot as those just mentioned because it feels like the ball bounce less. Maybe it is that the ball bounce more foreward?

But i do feel that since the carbon blade is harder i am forced to be more active myself on slower shots and maybe this forces me to have to be to active so i loose control and safety from this? I also experience it is more difficult to open against backspin, where the higher arc of the all woos gives me more margin for error.

I am very surprised with how i experienced the all wood, but maybe i need to get use to it? or maybe there are different types of control? also feel that i have less control with ALC because the ball bounces more by itself and the throw is very high. Anyone with knowledge that can explain what is really happening? lost here haha

To me, control means predictability and linear power output combined with consistent feedback. I believe what you are looking for is the same kind of linearity? Not too bouncy on low impact, but stiff and solid on high impact. I think I mentioned this somewhere before but thick and heavy basswood blades are less bouncy than modern limba-ayous ones and more solid on smashing.

zeio · Oct 24, 2019

fais said:
How does one measure control when it comes to TT blades/rubbers? I understand high throw v. low throw, gears, and linear, tensor/ESN (are tensor rubbers be linear?), but what exactly is control?

Does it mean the rubber is less reactive to speed and spin, allowing one to be less precise in placing the ball where one desires? Or does it mean something completely different...

Butterfly defines control as the reliability of hitting the shot in the direction as intended by the player. They compare the angles of the ball before and after impact on a testbed.

UpSideDownCarl · Oct 24, 2019

We need to be careful not to excite any of the table tennis physicists out there. Otherwise we might be in trouble.

The person is the one with the control. The equipment may be easier to control or harder to control. But the control is not in the equipment. It is a simplifying of language to say, "this blade has good control." The blade does not have any control. But one blade may be easier to control in one kind of shot than another blade.

A blade that is easy to control on flat hits or drives, may be hard to control on heavy spin loops. A blade that is easy to control on pushes or chops may be hard to control on drives or flat hits. A blade that is easy to control on loops with heavy spin may be hard to control on flat hits or drives.

But as a player develops his skills, the precision of contact, the control of hand pressure on impact, it becomes more possible to control more different kinds of equipment.

But don't get confused by the turn of a phrase. We simplify and say the equipment has control. But it doesn't. The touch and feel of the player is where the control actually lies.

BlueSkies · Oct 24, 2019

When a lot of people say "control", they basically just mean that the racket does what is expected. Nothing more.
Maximum control would be when it does exactly what is expected every single time.

While I get the point, it's quite hard to draw any conclusion from that data. It just means that used to said equipment.

To me, control is more of a buzzword than anything meaningful in the EJ debates.

My two cents.

Astorix · Oct 24, 2019

it can be totally subjective too. timo boll once said in an interview, yesterday his control of his racket was 9 out of 10 but today it was just 7 out of 10, why he ``felt`` less good.
basically it means its completely up to you.
human perception often hinders precise definition or universal knowledge. what is true for you, might be wrong for me or vise versa.

BlueSkies has a good point here as well. so many people with different answers but noone really is wrong or right.
i think, best is to just don`t give a **** about it.

What does "control" mean?

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