I Think I've Found the Most Important Trait of a God Blade, Part 2
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So is “supple” also person-dependent? Of course. For some players, the suppleness of a Q968 or a Heima refined-craft KLC is enough, with some stiffness too, raising backhand borrow-speed. But others feel that is not enough — they need more suppleness, the W968 level, to be comfortable.
Enough “suppleness” means what? Ball-eating depth. With it, first, you have a settled feel when striking (holding) the ball. The most extreme example was Gao Jun back in the day sawing down a Matsushita Koji chopping blade to play penhold short-pips.
This is also many players’ demand. Kong Linghui asked Butterfly to make him a heterogeneous-core arylate-carbon: arylate-carbon on the backhand, good for borrowing force; pure wood on the forehand, to hold the ball enough. Only a blade meeting that demand felt perfect to him.
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“Suppleness” is also affected by the rubber. Some find the Viscaria’s blade hardness on the hard side, with insufficient forehand ball-holding. But pair it with an oiled NEO Blue National or a Qian Tianyi star Blue National, and combined, the ball-holding feel becomes quite good. So overall, that “suppleness” feels enough to them.
You will likewise find the other blades in the Viscaria family becoming softer. The Zhang Jike ALC is called a softened Viscaria. The Lin Gaoyuan ALC and Fan Zhendong ALC are also clearly softened. Ball-holding outer blades really are the trend of the new era. Recently, in making the Heima refined-craft ALC (outer blue arylate-carbon), what I value first is not explosiveness — that structure never lacks it — but emphasizing “ball-holding.”
Continuing on rubber. Sometimes, when you cannot drive through the rubber, you feel the blade is not supple enough. When your rubber drives through well, the blade may also feel supple. Take the Boll ALC — opinions split. Some pair it with Hurricane and find the Boll ALC too fast, hard, uncontrollable. Plenty feel that way, including big shot Zhang Jike, who advises amateurs not to play the Boll ALC. But for those of us who like grippy tensors like T05, the hard-outside, crisp-inside Boll ALC is actually quite soft — our force instantly passes through the outer rubber and outer fiber to reach the inner plies, so it feels supple.
The Super Viscaria and Fan Zhendong SALC are similar. Some pair them with high-hardness rubber and find the blade hard. But those who like lower-hardness tensors find such blades soft and ball-holding.
That is, different power levels plus different rubber habits create different views on whether a blade is “supple.”
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So for some special styles, is suppleness unimportant? For example, some short-pips and short-pip players like good borrow-force — thick blades like the Texim, Chongmingniao, plain carbon, or springy thin blades like the Super Zhang Jike.
Either way, “suppleness” is relative. It means the blade is within your control, you can calmly shape the arc, there is a pause feel, and you can keep hitting measured balls. That is the essence of supple.
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Now “powerful.” Pros value “powerful” too, only most have good enough power application, so a blade whose bottom power is not especially strong still produces enough force for them. For example, Wang Manyu now uses the Fan Zhendong ALC; Hugo uses his carbon-free Hugo HAL.
Of course, if it could be more powerful without losing the original control, that is an upgrade — best of all. But where in this world is such perfection? Blades and rubber alike. Otherwise Lim Jonghoon and Yoshimura Maharu would not have toiled so long between ALC and SALC, and Lin Yun-Ju would not have asked Butterfly if they could make the D05 harder (he wants to keep T05 Hard’s punch while having D05’s fault tolerance).
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“Powerful,” at least to us amateurs, must mean: relatively easily driving the opponent dead, and being able to settle the point with one strike when you want to. Because our tactical and rallying ability is not that high, sometimes we need a bit of brute force to swat an equal-level amateur dead with one shot. It is a primal demand. So at least for us amateurs, any blade that is steady as a rock but ordinary in bottom power cannot be called a god blade.
In the end, when you cannot have both your “white moonlight” and your “cinnabar mole,” you can only choose, or change yourself. Take the Boll 70 and Carbo 45 — very ball-holding, with spin ability among the best of outer ALC blades, and high fault tolerance, very close to god blades. But they feel a touch soft, and the power is not always satisfying. Against an opponent with strong back-table defense, it is hard to play to your heart’s content. At that point, either you seek another direction, or you try to embrace their imperfection and find scoring methods that fit them (relying on spin or placement variation, or speeding up, rather than single-ball power). After all, where do you get every bargain? Does a supple-yet-powerful blade like the 968 not also have the drawback of draining your stamina and energy?
But regardless, supple yet powerful is, so far, what I consider one of the most important standards for screening god blades.