But I just explained the whole thing in my earlier post
Most of your so called 40-year-old Joe's use expensive status symbol rubbers like Tenergy etc & not inexpensive Chinese rubbers.
Amateur players do not need (or more like do not have) the precision & technique of a pro or top amateur. Sticky rubbers are more suitable for them because for the amateur, more spin (to spin or back spin) is needed to pull the ball down on the opponent's side of table. But the pros who use (& can use) non sticky antispin rubbers like Tenergy use illegally speed glue or illegally boost to get additional spin from the sponge. But illegal speed gluing & illegal boosting is not recommended for lower-level amateurs but lot of them do boost illegally or speed glue illegally because again, it is such a cool thing socially to say that they (illegally) boost or (illegally) speed glue because you sound like a bad boy or a bad girl LOL. who is doing something criminal (given that ITTF tried to ban speed-gluing in 1995 (but had to repeal the rule immediately) and ITTF also says they banned boosting in 2008.
I also agreed sticky rubbers with too hard a sponge or too soft (mushy) a sponge are harder for an amateur to control. But pros illegally boost Hurricane with the hardest sponge because they can handle it. Otherwise, sticky Chinses rubbers are a far superior choice to European & Japanese rubbers if you select the right sponge hardness that matches your current skill level.(Itmay change as you improve & you may ven move to pro rubbers like Tenergy if you move up in skill) . I personally have nothing against European & Japanese rubbers and as I said I used Butterfly Super Sriver for close to 10 years (& used Butterfly Feint Classic for 8 years before it was banned). I also agree Sriver & Mark V are greatest rubbers ever in 38 ball era & Butterfly & Stiga are still gold standard with higher quality than Chinse rubbers. But Tenergy & Feint Long 3 etc are the biggest jokes in 40+ plastic ball era.
Tenergy etc are great for pros. But also keep in mind that most of these pros are sponsored (more like Butterfly's kept biatches) and get these rubbers free while the status hungry amateur subsidizes the pros. From the point of supporting the growth of the sport, I actually even support that to a certain extent but an amateur you have to balance it against their own needs first.
As I pointed out in another sport this was the biggest problem in a related issue of long pips & 1998 Durban Aspect Ratio Reduction Massacre. Almost all the top pros & most higher-level choppers used Feint Long Classic, ITTF to this day has conned everyone into thinking that most top players used Curl P1 & used it as an excuse to pass the 1998 Durban Aspect Ratio Reduction Massacre, whereas the real reason to pass this regulation had 0% technical merit & was 100% political (I won't get into here). But all the top pro choppers had to keep (from very highest level and too many to name here) their mouths shut because they were under Butterfly contract & Butterfly was releasing Feint Long 2 for 40- celluloid ball but both Feint Long 2 & Fient long 3 & the Ilius are pure garbage in the context of the 40+ plastic ball (though I have to say Ilius is superior to Dtec OX but Ilius is pure garbage compared to any High Aspect Ratio Super Long pips in the 40+ plastic ball era)
