Modern rubbers are killing the rotation in the topspin play

[jk1980]

I would not invalidate the point of the rubbers being "at fault" for the less spinny game. Remember that the equipment you play will influence what and how you learn to play. If it is significantly easier to win points by "powerlooping" with little spin, then that is what you are getting used to. There is this guy in one of the clubs i frequent who relearned the game with XiomVega X as rubber and even though that rubber is spinny enough, he does power loop 90% of the time. If that is enough for him to win points against the pushes he gets 99% of the time who should blame him for ending the point early with half power loop half smash? from the people he plays against i am the only one that actually applies backspin to the pushes so he does gift me 3 to 5 points per set simply by him not being able to loop my long push. If he started off with a less easy to generate power/speed with rubber he probably would have learned to spin first instead of resorting to power.

We do see similar patterns when i play against some of the youngsters from the youth and the women from the women team. in general the game is much less spin focussed there and they always watch their rubber in disbelieve if their loop technique that just works fine against no spin or very low backspin fails.

 

[J-fed]

I'd say missing long is the ideal type of problem to have for youth players who are being coached.

It means they're committing to shots properly, but probably not brushing the ball or closing the angle enough on the shot - both are easily corrected.

With coaching, they will adapt over time and get more consistent at landing their shots. More importantly, youth players need to enjoy the game to stay motivated, which will certainly make them much more motivated in the long term. Classic rubbers are boring, tensors are fun!

It’s a great POV too

 

[Tyce]

Interesting, ruminating on this.

I think it's a fair point to say that overriding spin has become a much more important skill than purely applying a lot of it.
Also, perhaps I'm just too stuck in the old mindset of using spin over power, and that could be a fair point as to why I'm not getting what I want out of most tensor rubbers.

There's just someting magical about producing a heavy-ass loop and seeing it dip down just on the white line, but chasing that might be as useless as chasing super hard third ball finishers all the time. After all, most progress is found in the basics: being in the right place, playing the ball with control and placing the ball accurately.

 

[Sriver1]

Smaller ball plus plastic almost killed the spin. This leds to play close to the table and powerloop every ball. We should go back to a smaller ball to bring back style variety.
It was fun when had to face different playing styles.

 

[vvk1]

Smaller ball plus plastic almost killed the spin. This leds to play close to the table and powerloop every ball. We should go back to a smaller ball to bring back style variety.
It was fun when had to face different playing styles.

"Bigger" ball plus plastic ...