Custom Blades and Rubbers: How Are They "Made"?
A small number of custom V>15 Extra once appeared on the market, with “National Team Exclusive” printed on the sponge. Do not worry — unlike some fake-custom national Hurricane and fake-custom Butterfly mystification (printing “so-and-so player issue”), this time it is real.
Custom Rubber: How It Is Made
The V>15 Extra national-team custom went from the market regular’s 47.5 degrees to 55 degrees now. On one hand, the sponge was hardened; on the other, the surface ball-grip is more obvious. Did some players not report the retail V15’s surface easily slips, needing to bite into the sponge to create spin? Now the custom V15 grips the ball much more easily. The feel has some of Tibhar’s new Evolution air. This can of course be played on the forehand. On the backhand, my sheet back then was about 51g. The weight of forehand and backhand rubbers is entirely down to personal feel, and whether they affect each other varies by person.
A similar approach appeared early on T05. The custom sent to the national team, the CHINA SP version of T05, clearly had a sponge harder and tougher than retail, harder to drive through. The power is more domineering, a bit like the current T05 Hard. But as the sponge hardened, small-ball control got harder, and the give-and-take is less obvious than retail, more demanding of power. So I later found the retail version more comfortable to command. Actually, a few national players admit the retail is easier to play. The CHINA version of D09c also has a harder, slightly tougher sponge. But I played a few white-shell customs, from the Japanese national team, and did not feel them hardened. I guess it still varies by player. Because reportedly, the D05 Miwa Harimoto uses is clearly hardened. A similar approach appeared on the Yasaka Feilong too — the custom version’s sponge hardness is higher. Here, DHS’s situation is a bit different. Many national players’ custom Hurricanes actually do not play as hard to drive through as the hardness shows, but the toughness really is decent. In sum, do not all rush in just because it is “custom” — act within your means.
Custom Blades: How They Are Made
This is clearly more complex. They can be tailored to athletes. For example, Stiga made Xu Xin’s Rosewood 5 with a water-drop face, and made Zhu Yuling’s Intensity all-wood with a large 163-by-157mm face. Or, Butterfly early on made a custom aramid carbon with all-wood on one side and aramid carbon on the other. In recent years, for Taiwanese women players, they made fiber outer on one side and inner on the other, or an inner ZLC no longer using an ayous core but a kiri core. A simple blade-custom approach is hardening. Like the Zhu Yuling 45, a kind of custom method — selecting wood closer to the root, with higher hardness. It comes out springier and punchier than the Carbon 45, but not necessarily liked by many. I actually prefer the original ordinary Carbon 45’s effortless spin-adding — though bottom power is small, it plays transparent and relaxed. Stiga’s national-team Inspiration hybrid carbon is harder than retail. Joola’s Zhou Qihao 90 for Zhou Qihao is hardened too. And a few brands’ so-called player customs are actually just heavier, harder picks from the retail batch. No need to blindly follow — whether it suits you needs thought. Hard and heavy ones do produce more power on a single loop-drive, but are also tiring to play.