When National Team Players Used Off-the-Shelf Blades (Part 1)
1 — Stiga CL CR
Stiga does make custom-built blades — I’ve shown photos before of Xu Xin’s teardrop-shaped Rosewood 5, or Zhu Yuling’s oversized 163x157mm Walnut 5. But the truth is, many elite players have achieved great results with standard retail Stiga blades. The CL series alone has produced countless world champions.
In recent years, the most memorable example is three female players and their CL setups — I wrote about them in an article called “Three National-Level Girls, Three CL Blades.”
It’s confirmed: Ishikawa Kasumi’s blade was not a custom — it was a standard retail version sold in China, what was called the Xingsheng retail version at the time. Back then, there were heated debates about which version of the CL was better. These days nobody cares whether it’s Japanese or Chinese retail — individual variation definitely exists, so you pick carefully and trust a bit of luck. The main things to look for are weight and thickness. Heavier generally means more solid. If you’re playing with pips, avoid going too light. And choose a thicker blade for pips. If you’re primarily a looper, go thinner. That’s basic knowledge.
There’s another blade in a similar situation: Donic UP. Many copies weigh over 90 grams. I used to play with one that was over 100 grams, and the balance was still great — it played beautifully. It had some of the flavor of the early gold-label CL. The downside was it tended to have stringing issues. But it was rock solid, and it didn’t match particularly well with Hurricane 3 — German rubbers actually paired better with it.
Later versions of the UP were lightened to the low 80s, and the solidity dropped off a lot. For all-wood blades, weight has a significant impact on structural support and overall solidness.
In May last year, Stiga announced signing Lee Eunhye (the South Korean women’s team’s top player). She presumably played with a standard retail version before that. Debating whether CL CR is outdated is a false argument. Some people still love its control feel and beautiful touch. As long as the speed at medium force is enough for you, it does the job. If you need more speed, do what Lee Eunhye does — put tacky rubber on both sides. She’s probably still on forehand T05 Hard / backhand T05.
I’ve also faced a provincial-team-level pips player. When he used the Super Zhang Jike, it was faster but somehow less threatening and more error-prone. On the CL, he played fierce and tricky — a completely different beast.
2 — Zhongshan-Made
I’m grouping these together because of what they share: the Zhongshan manufacturing origin. First, let’s talk seven-ply all-wood. One retail blade that was very popular in the organic era was the Donic Ovtcharkov 7-ply — used by Liu Shiwen, Wen Jia, and others. Despite its walnut veneer, the overall feel is not hard at all; it’s actually medium hardness, softer than some brands’ walnut-5-ply offerings.
Then there’s the legendary Swat (pure seven-ply all-wood), which has ranked in Japan’s top three sellers for years on end. Zhongshan-made all-wood really does deliver in terms of quality consistency and feel transparency. The same goes for Victas’s flagship Niwa Koki all-wood.
You can count many of these national-level seven-ply all-wood blades as retail versions — partly because even if they wanted a custom, there’s not much room to change anything. Of course, most of them genuinely do use just the retail version.
Briefly: there’s also the Zhongshan-made Galaxy Lingan Carbon. After leaving the national team, Liu Shiwen used this blade in the National Championships and National Games. If there were any customization, I imagine it was just better wood selection — for example, I once had a sample Super Viscaria built with a grade-A kiri core. Zhongshan carbon-fiber blades probably work the same way: tighter wood selection for more structural integrity.