Fan Zhendong equipment

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Here is a picture of an old Viscaria of mine taken from the side just now. Trust me, nobody took a wood blade and out Viscaria handles on this one!! It is an ALC blade but quite heavily used and not very new (black tag). Notice the handle, the ALC layer looks kind of brown, and if the edgetape came lower or the picture was from farther away, you would argue it is all wood.

View attachment 8187

Yep. And if you add the distortions of a super zoom lens and a photo taken from 100 yards away, people might be arguing that this is an all wood blade with a Viscaria handle.

That was actually part of the point I was making. :)
 
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And the one I actually use.... No sweat stains from this end and now you can actually see that the ALC is blue and black.

Black tag 2.jpg
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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And the one I actually use.... No sweat stains from this end and now you can actually see that the ALC is blue and black.

View attachment 8189

And this photo gives me the shot I was looking for. The space between the two Arylate plies is pretty much the same as the space between the two dark plies on the most recent photo of FZD's blade in the Asia Championships. That blade FZD is using probably is a Viscaria.
 
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This one is new and never used. It has never even had rubber sheets glue onto it. Still not completely easy to see the ALC but maybe more clear than the other photos.

Viscaria never used.jpg
 
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This one is new and never used. Still not completely easy to see the ALC but maybe more clear than the other photos.

View attachment 8190

This one gives the view well too. The thickness of the plies and the spacing make that photo of FZD's racket from Asia Championships look like a Viscaria to me. The color of the composite ply is easily explained by the zoom effect and the fact that he has probably used that racket for enough training that the plies darkened some from dirt.

As far as ZJK's blade, I think it is a Viscaria. But that same effect from the Zoom and the fact that the ALC ply does start looking darker did get a bunch of people to make the assumption that for some reason ZJK is using an all wood blade with a Viscaria handle.

I am not going to go there because,
1) I doubt that, and
2) because none of this really matters much to me. :)

Thanks for the photos Baal. For me they made it so I could see the Viscaria plies from the side and see that the amount of wood between the to ALC plies is pretty much as close to the same as you could estimate from a super zoom photo. So, that FZD blade seems like it could be a Viscaria to me.
 
I dont understand why people keep arguing about this. For pro players, they definitely stick with one blade for quite a long time. Changing equipment changes playstyle. You can't go: oh this week I will play with viscaria and next month I will play with stiga vps inf. During the last month chinese super league FZD used viscaria with viscaria handle, so I think that's clear enough of what FZD is currently using.

As for the blue ALC on viscaria, come on, it could be sweat/glue/dirt... he trains for 7 hours a day, no wonder the color is darken.
 
Why on earth would ZJK use an all wood blade with a Viscaria handle? I have no idea. Why would he use a Viscaria handle instead of one of the ZJK handles? I have no idea. [Edit: I am not saying anything about what ZJK is using. I am just saying, if that was a wood blade, why the Viscaria handle?]

Why would FZD play for Stiga when, 100%, for sure he has a Viscaria with a Stiga Infinity handle? Why wouldn't he just go to Butterfly if he wants to use a Viscaria? Or why wouldn't he get Stiga to make exactly what he wanted? Both FZD and Butterfly could make a lot off of that? None of it makes any sense. :)

I d'ont know why, but Butterfly seems to wanna sponsor only one top chinese player at a time. Ma Long was playing also with TBS/TBalc while being sponsored by Nittaku......he didn't switched to Butterfly either.
Before ZJK, Butterfly had Kong Linghui as their "chinese superstar".

Why only one top chinese player at a time ? I Don't know.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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I d'ont know why, but Butterfly seems to wanna sponsor only one top chinese player at a time. Ma Long was playing also with TBS/TBalc while being sponsored by Nittaku......he didn't switched to Butterfly either.
Before ZJK, Butterfly had Kong Linghui as their "chinese superstar".

Why only one top chinese player at a time ? I Don't know.

You know, I didn't think about that. You may be right. Good point.
 
says Spin and more spin.
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I dont understand why people keep arguing about this. For pro players, they definitely stick with one blade for quite a long time. Changing equipment changes playstyle. You can't go: oh this week I will play with viscaria and next month I will play with stiga vps inf. During the last month chinese super league FZD used viscaria with viscaria handle, so I think that's clear enough of what FZD is currently using.

As for the blue ALC on viscaria, come on, it could be sweat/glue/dirt... he trains for 7 hours a day, no wonder the color is darken.

When Ma Long switched from a TB ALC to a DHS blade, he used several in the course of a few months and changed and changed until he seems to have found one he liked. Through that whole time while he was switching equipment around he did go on a big winning streak. So it is possible for the top pros to switch equipment and try different things. But it is true, they usually don't.
 
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Awww Man... Too bad.
I thought i might be able to end this discussion, cause someone posted on a german forum, that he is selling the STIGA Infinity VPS Pro Player Version, which only players with a sponsoring contract from STIGA would be able to get. The blade´s specs are 151x158mm weighing around 93/94 grams whereas the regular version 149x155mm and weighs 90 grams . He wrote that the average Joe doesn´t know about this blade. That´s why everybody was speculating that FZD uses a viscaria.

I must admit, that this really got my attention, so i tried contacting the seller, that i wanted to buy it, if he could post some photos (to that time there were none). He responded quite unpolitely that he doesn´t own a cam and why i wanted pics for, cause the specs were written detailed. (What an unfriendly, non-customer-oriented Knucklehead!)
I wrote once more and told him that i´m really interested and i wanted a little more details. That idiot started reacting even more suspicious.
E.g. that i must be stupid askin´ again. I first didn´t react to that provokin´ mail. But dude had the heart to post some more bullcrap again, so i had to answer in a very clear manner that i won´t be accepting that kind of treatment.
Unfortunately it was the weekend and the moderators reacted kinda slow, otherwise things wouldn´t have escalated so quickly.
He now posted a couple of nothing saying pics. (where he first wrote that he´s unable to upload pics)

Well, long story short: the blade is still for sale, if someone is interested. I can pm a link to the thread. But the seller is not recommendable.

On the other hand: Maybe a STIGA sponsored player (like Dan) can shed some light on this.

Here are dude´s pics... They don´t look so different to me...
 

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