Fascinating discussion everyone 🙂🙂 I really love these kind of subjects.
My view is that neither is more important than the other, and arguing which is more important or adds more to player performance, kind of misses the whole point of TT equipment management entirely.
Both a blade and its rubber(s) are only solitary components of a much larger whole. The performance characteristics or benefits they both offer is entirely accumulative, and synergistic. There's plenty of blades out there who's performance suffers when teamed with the wrong rubbers, and vice versa. Rubber Glue and blade sealant choices can also factor into bat performance quite a bit, but they don't really get much notice from players in general when talking about equipment performance (rubber glue can add extra bounce and popping catapult to a bat, while blade sealants can add hardness to a blade's outer layer. Both can affect playing feel, so both are worth considering a little further as well. )
More importantly, I personally believe it's really important that NONE of these various equipment elements be considered solely in isolation from the others, as doing so has the potential to be actively destructive to one's game.
In truth, competitive TT is an utterly unique game to my mind. It has no direct parallels with any other sport on Earth in many regards, but especially when it comes to personal equipment.
I can't think of any other sport (ball sports or otherwise) that lets players vary and customize the characteristics and performance of their personal equipment as much as ours does.
Nor can I think if any other sort where the outcomes of such decisions can MASSIVELY impact not just your own personal performance, but also the nature of play in general, and the ultimate outcome of a match.
Even if other sports DID allow such equipment variance, materials science and simple physics dictates the achievable differences in performance that result from those changes, STILL wouldn't be quite as profound as they are for us.
The large and ultra-light ball we use is a monumental anomaly so far as world sports go. Accommodating its lack of mass and controlling it's flight through the air dictates our personal equipment choices more than any other factor.
Give a really good TT player bad equipment, and yes they will be able to compensate for it, and still perform at a high level. But they still won't reach their potential peak with it either.
Not even Ma Long can turn a Mark V into a Dignics 09C. Sure, ML would beat most of us easily with such a set up.
But if ML was stuck using two Mark Vs strapped to a Donic Appelgren, against an opponent like FZD (who's wielding his usual equipment) then ML's disadvantage is obvious to all, and his blade's lack of tempo would probably prove too much to accommodate.
Similarly, if Waldner (and other great players of his day) had access to Tenergy / Dignics / modern hybrid rubbers, I very much doubt they'd still choose to use Sriver, Coppa, Super 729 or Donic F1 instead.
And I haven't even started yet on things like anti-spin and long pips!
Imagine for a moment someone like Messi wearing a pair of football / soccer boots that behaved like a long-pips combination player's rubbers: -- where one foot radically increased speed and spin on the ball, whereas the other foot made the ball swerve erratically through the air, and bounce counterintuitively on the pitch (ie: the ball's behaviour was radically different off of each foot. And that's just one player -- imagine the entire Argentine team debuting such boots in a World Cup final, and volleying the ball backwards and forwards to each other at TT-like speeds and distances.
Opposing players and fans alike would probably be all over the place about it... and God alone knows what FIFA would do about it. But for all of us in TT land, that's just another day the club.
Keep in mind also how age and use greatly affects our equipment, and the behaviour of the ball. Rubbers wear out and lose performance levels as they age, on two seperate fronts. They lose performance in terms of wear and tear during use, and they lose performance comparatively speaking when compared to newer more advanced rubbers. A friend of mine played me last night using an ancient and hugely worn H3 on his FH. The rubber was still tacky in some spots, but was as dead and flat as anti-spin in others. I had no idea what was coming over the net, and became hugely frustrated about it, to the point of losing my normally jovial and unflappable demeanor at the table (ie: I spat the dummy afterwards something chronic 🤣🤣)
The same age-related issues apply to blades as well. Blades wear out and slowly lose performance as they age much the same as rubbers do... it's a much slower process I grant you, but it still occurs. In terms of blades also being superseded by newer models, this can also happen, but it's also a lot rarer due to commercial factors (There's been a LOT less R&D and development done with blades in general IMO, as its a lot harder for large manufacturers to innovate in their blade designs for commercial reasons (Please don't get me talking on the subject of innovation in blade design though, otherwise I'll be here all day! 😂😂🤣🤣)
Long story short, to my mind, neither is more important than the other: arguing whether rubbers or blades are more important, is a bit like a FIFA football manager arguing whether having a good goalie is better or more important than having a good striker.
At amateur soccer club level, having just one of the two might win you games, but the better the opposition gets, the more you need to have quality in both these positions, not to mention getting all the other variables right as well. No goalie can defend a goal properly without other defenders, and no striker can consistently go end to end through the entire midfield in their own without the help of other forwards (unless of course if you're Maradona, Pele, Ronaldinho or Messi... But those guys don't count as they just ain't human 😁😁).
Really, to my thinking there's a certain wisdom in looking at all the individual elements of your TT equipment (FH rubber, BH Rubber, Blade, Rubber Glue and Blade Sealant) as merely individual members of a team: i.e. it's the sum of all parts that matters most, as opposed to one individual option.
Sticking with the soccer-related theme for a moment, it therefore follows you should regard your set-up much the same way a professional team-sports coach (or FIFA Team Manager) might regard individual players:
- each individual player has a particular role to play. They need to fill that role adequately, and consistently, and they need to also allow other team members to fulfill their roles without impediment.
- each individual player cost you money to acquire (either a little or a lot). Spending too much in one area will only starve your budget in others, and by extension constrain your team's performance in other areas of need.
-- all players need to be highly compatible. They need to get along, work well together, and compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses if they're ever going to reach their full potential
- As a team they will only achieve their full potential through constant, regular, disciplined and structured practice and assessment together, over a period of several weeks or months. This gives you the opportunity to fully assess the sum of their various parts, and identify if any changes are necessary.
- You only make changes to the team's line up of individuals when it's absolutely necessary. If the entire team is performing well and their improvement and performance is maintained over time, then you've gotten all the variables right and you shouldn't mess with it too much.
- Never make unnecessary changes out of mere curiosity or a desire for novelty. It destabilizes the synergy you have collectively achieved with them, and more often than not, unnecessary changes only set the whole team back through a lack of cohesion.
- If some elements clearly aren't getting along well, or if overall performance in general starts to drop off over time, then something is clearly wrong, or else something important is missing from the equation, and further review / direct intervention is therefore warranted.
- multiple / massive changes across the entire the line up at any one time, are to be avoided, as it disrupts performance too much and undermines consistency. Make your changes sparingly, carefully, and reasonably, and only assess the end result on any change in performance through analysing any changes in ALL of the various elements involved, not just the performance of the individual element that was changed.
- And most importantly: if something (anything!) in the team line up clearly seems to be the root of multiple problems, and is disproportionately affecting performance, then it's better to act quickly and remove the offending factor from the equation, entirely and permanently.
Persevering with an unusual or unworkable changes through believing slow overall adjustment and improvement is possible over time, is a bit of a logical fallacy.
Yes, large radical changes can *sometimes* pan out well for you after a period of adjustment, but more often than not, they simply don't.
At best, the long term performance impacts of large radical changes are minor and easily reversible. Most likely however forcing large adjustments to try and mesh well together, will only destabilize the harmony between each element disproportionately, to the point performance drops radically over the longer term.
In such cases you often find yourself having to go back to the very beginning and reconstructing everything from
scratch. This takes time and money, and your overall performance will be stuck in the toilet for a very long time as a result
Here endith the metaphor 😁
Thanks for reading. Hope all of my soccer-themed rambling above is of actual use to somebody. 🙂
