During his prime (1996–1999) Liu played with TSP Spinpips on his forehand and Mark V on his backhand, yet still on the Stiga Clipper blade. The Spinpip rubbers was banned in the late 2000 and their counterpart Spinpip Md the year after. Both times because of the aspect ratio (ratio of pips height to width) and its structure of the pip and the arrangement of the pips that made the rubber extremely spinny and unpredictable; and therefore judged to be too advantageous. It is therefore uncertain if Liu actually ever played with Stiga rubbers in competition.
Source:
Wikipedia
LGL equipment was judged to be too advantageous?! Could we say that his success has to do with being too advantageous in his equipment?
I wasn't around or old enough to know of the decision making back then to ban pips, other than what one can read in terms of history. aka, I wasn't old enough to have any direct source or inside info.
However, LGL had one of the best serves in the world and with hidden, even with him using inverted, he caused a lot of havoc.
LGL was also the last generation of Chinese champions to use pimple out.
LGL was probably not the only one in the world using TSP Spinpips.
So same question asking back to you, did LGL win because of his equipment?
if the equipment had magical powers, then why only LGL had magic and not the other users?
If people want to ban equipment (which in the 90s-00s, there was way too many rule changes), then why they didn't ban inverted rubbers when "real" spin was introduced into the game?
Just look at the history and see how many years inverted rubbers was superior over the old rackets back then.
If any equipment was superior, I would argue it was that era was ease and the world didn't go and ban advantageous inverted rubbers back then, but their learn to adapt and as we know, it is now 99~99.9% of the rubbers being used out there today.
