Its my turn to be in dilemma

[SFF_lib]

Played with it ( non-boosted ) for three hours today. Below is my empirical observation:

1. You definitely need power to drive the ball. It is dead slow if you drive half-heartedly. It is like what we call in automobile driving, a turbo lag. Below a certain RPM, a turbo car feels sedate and underpowered. Once above a certain RPM the turbo boost kicks in. Similarly, perhaps below a certain force threshold you could not engage the sponge due to its inherent non-springiness of the sponge, but above a certain force threshold, when you manage to hit through the top-sheet and engage the sponge, the power is unleashed.

2. My club mate said that the spin or kick effect is very strong. The trajectory is low. The speed of the loop is also very fast.

3. I did a casual experiment by twiddling over to my Donic Bluefire M1 BH rubber and play as FH just for direct comparison. M1 is spinny and fast, it even seems to be faster. But there is less kick effect. My club-mate can block the M1 casually back to me. However, for the Skyline, due to the kick effect, the ball kick out of the table when block by the same person.

4. Pushing. Somehow you need to active push and not push passively or else the ball will drop into the net. You need to engage the rubber, but once you engage it, the push goes with a lot of backspin.

5. Blocking. Feels solid and firm. There is a sense of confidence when blocking.

6. Back to the topic of looping which is my main weapon. I need to fully engage my whole body rotation to drive / topspin the ball. Using arm strength just isn't gonna cut it. One may escape with tensor rubber even if your loop is not perfect, but not with this rubber. You have to drive with your whole body behind it. I love it this feeling, some may not like it. It is a matter of personal preference.

7. The rubber medium heavy, weighing 65g uncut.

8. Conclusion: This rubber is less forgiving than tensor rubber but it reward good body mechanics with very spinny top-spin with massive kick effect.

I did not try it on BH. Maybe my next session I will try playing it as BH rubber just for experimentation sake.

Looping in full swing is such a good feeling. I also love the loud hitting sound!!

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Just for clarification with regards to full swing. To some newbies, the term full swing may conjure an image of a wild haymaker type of swing. Ma Long perhaps can do it or FZD or XX have a long arc swing. But do notice that these are pros and they have a very developed sense of arm swing. In comparison mine is short and compact but it is still playable on these hard tacky rubber.

To compensate for the force required to engage the hard sponge, I do have to rotate my body with power. I cannot do those long stroke like ML, FZD et al because my accuracy will suffer.