How Top Players Choose Blade Weight — and Other Equipment Musings
A loose handful of equipment notes and observations.
Tenergy 19
A reader asked about Tenergy 19. I’d treat it as a softened Dignics 05: the dense, small pimples and the topsheet feel give T19 a grip and crispness on the loop a little like D05, and the topsheet is more wear-resistant than T05 or T80. As for sponge hardness, it’s fairly easy to penetrate on the backhand — if you can’t tame D05 there, T19 is worth a try.
You Don’t Always Need to “Penetrate” the Rubber
A rubber doesn’t have to be fully penetrated to work — as long as it produces a threatening ball and you stay in control. Take the Yanyang blade: its hardwood surface and solid body only flex locally at medium power, and penetrating it fully is hard. But it produces high speed easily, is crisp on borrowed pace and still grips. In essence it’s the same idea as the Super Zhang Jike. The structures differ, but for penhold players the Yanyang can be seen, in a sense, as a poor man’s Super Zhang.
Players’ Blade Weights
Ding Ning’s EG at 82g, Wang Manyu’s Viscaria at 84g, Chen Qi’s EG at 97g. Zhou Qihao and Fan Zhendong prefer their gold-stamp Viscarias above 95g. Some of this is fact, some rumor, but it reflects how men’s and women’s players differ on weight. There was an old interview with Yan An, who liked around 88g for sharper close-table speed — the lighter the blade, the quicker your hands.
On the Fan Zhendong ALC’s “Small Sweet Spot”
People say the Fan Zhendong ALC has a “small sweet spot.” Really, it just grips too much and doesn’t go when you don’t drive, then sprays out once you snap the head of the blade through. That head sweet spot is exactly what gives it a higher power ceiling — it’s a characteristic, much like people calling the Innerforce ZLC “gappy.” A trait, not necessarily a flaw.
Red vs Black Rubber
Red and black sheets do perform differently, thanks to the dye. Years ago Dr. Zhang Xiaopeng wrote, roughly, that black is tackier and red is faster. That’s why you see red on the backhand and black on the forehand — to maximize the effect, since backhand strokes are small and benefit from speed.
Colors and Dyes
It’s not just red and black: some blue sheets grip more than red/black to me; some green ones feel plasticky and grip spin less — though performance isn’t uniform across brands for the same color. Dye affects the sponge too: Xiom’s “black carbon sponge,” for instance, doesn’t actually contain carbon — it’s just a carbon-black colored dye.
Shoes for Aggressive Attackers
Samsonov used to wear Asics Blade badminton shoes. Badminton and table tennis shoes share much, but for an aggressive, first-three-balls attacker who crouches low and pounces, a thinner-soled table tennis shoe (like the Hyperbeat 4 or Excounter 2) is better. If you’re big or play a patient rallying game, a badminton shoe can work. The more aggressively you attack, the thinner and quicker-starting a shoe you want. And in theory, the harder the rubber, the higher its spin ceiling.