It seems to me like many people in this thread believe that all pros only get special things to the extent that they can pick the best of a batch, but maybe I'm reading it differently. When in reality, the lower level pros can only pick from a batch but the top ones can get pretty much whatever the hell they want and will go through prototypes that are very fundamentally different from what is sold to the public to see if they like it. Better materials, and yes also more stringently selected, more customization in terms of construction, thicknesses overall and of each ply, handle customizations, the ability to balance it to spec, and more...
So I'm not seeing in what way is it not really true that companies like Butterfly and DHS, and probably ESN/ADK give things to certain pros that they don't give to the public (or even all their sponsored players)?
Okay - I have to go ERT - I hate going ERT:
It is true that companies can and do in some cases give certain things to their top pros that they do not give to other players or the public. This is more true for rubbers than for blades but even then, this is overstated to claim that pros get *better* and higher quality stuff that is not commercially available to the public. I argue that the overstatement has gotten to a point where people feel confident asserting it even in cases where it is disputed or likely an obvious overstatement.
Very often, the specifics of these things are often conflated to give the impression that almost everything a top pro uses is a special commercially unavailable version of what the brand is selling (with the purpose of keeping the good stuff for the top players), when very often, it is claimed in cases where there is a reasonable explanation for it and cases when it is not true. We started out with the claim that Timo got rubbers tuned to his specifications and blades custom made for him and we are now at least stuck on discussing the blades and not the rubbers) to make it seem like you should simply assume that if a pro is using something, it is something better than what you can buy because the company cannot sell you the premium blade/rubber the player *really* uses.
I know for example that some pros use thicker or harder ESN sponged rubbers than is available for sale in some markets and possibly globally. But this should not be the default assumption. You should assume that even for the top pros, most of them are using something reasonably close to the market version of what they are advertised as playing with with most of the differences coming down to the ability of a pro to select things that suit his preferences. If you know specific details of some custom arrangement that a pro has with good evidence for it, then believe that. But beware of this idea that by default, a pro is doing something with special equipment that is not like what you buy on the market because commercially available stuff is not up to snuff.
People should realize that pros are often training and playing frequently enough that the timelines for what they use drive different priorities from the timelines for what amateurs use so in some case, lower durability stuff with higher performance is very much in play when it comes to rubbers.
With respect to blades - with WBG for example, lots of blades soak up some water and become softer over time. so you are going to make something with special wood to get used up over a short period with all the regluing? For a player like Boll building and rotating 6 blades, you are building 6 custom blades for him with a different recipe from what is on the market but when he picks up Jonathan Groth's Primorac Carbon with D09c and likes it and switches to it despite all his superior quality material?
In the end, people should just be careful when accepting the idea that pros are getting good stuff that amateurs cannot get because it's driven largely by quality. That pros can get things better suited to their game is true - that it is about customization to create better stuff than is commercially available is what I am asking people to be a bit more skeptical of.
