my coach was sponsored by tibhar and told me they had different segments of what kind of deal you get, depending on how high you play and how young and upcoming you are. the lowest would by to just get some rubbers per year maybe like 20 or so (my coached used one fresh sheet of MX-P every month for both sides). then you would have the full thing of getting everything you need like shoes, blade, bags, how many rubbers you want. and then you would have custom needs like choosing the individual hardness of the sponge, or even the topsheet including ones that are not even for sale. sometimes you even can choose a blade and get them to make it softer, or slower, or more flexible, or stiffer for you (kind of like the purpose of the DHS w968 from what i read in this forum) on this i would say no, pros are not playing with the same equipment as you can buy in the store, or at least not all pros do...
but it also doesn't matter. sometimes these wishes of pros are designed for their kinda play and what would it bring us mortals to release a tibhar K3 extra pro with hardness of 60° while even the best players in my club (2000 german TTR) find the normal K3 already borderline hard. same with MX-P hard, that was released because it was played by pros but no one i know of plays these rubber, not even my coach, because it is just insanly hard to play if you don't have pro skills. also the lifetime of these rubbers is not a manufacturer purpose because pros will change them every 2 weeks anyway. so sometimes i don't get these discussion. it is not like we would play magically better, no we would actually play way worse and would pay more and this is what zhang jike also said in the video.
