The New Era's New Demands on Rubber
1
A player commented that the R7 (Rakza 7) lacks support, unsuited to today’s ball. There is some truth, but not entirely. If the R7 is already inadequate, then the Red V, T05fx and so on are about the same, not to mention the Blue V (Vega Europe), top-10 in Japanese sales. This shows one thing: because everyone’s technical level, power level and habits differ greatly, views on rubber are inconsistent. For many lower-rated amateurs, pairing a softer, gripping rubber on the backhand to first secure the landing rate is the standard advice. As I know, there is a retired provincial player using Donic F2 on the backhand and a 2100-plus expert using Venom 450, both playing thrivingly.
2
From Rakza 7 to Rakza 7 Hard — on the support issue. What does a rubber’s support affect? “Soft rubber has a good arc” — Captain Long’s line still floats in my ears. As everyone knows, Ma Long’s backhand rubber hardness is relatively soft — though actually not as soft as the star national rubber labels, at least softer than Liang Jingkun’s. Harder rubber has relatively better support. When you can drive through, harder gives fiercer ball quality with more oppression. The harder T05 Hard, compared with T05, after driving through is sheer lightning in speed, with ball quality a notch heavier, like cracking a whip. From R7 to R7 Hard is the new plastic ball era’s new demand on ball quality. It is an acknowledged trend, though not necessarily suiting all amateurs. Besides, soft rubber, facing the opponent’s attack, easily lacks support and drops the ball. Butterfly internally thinks so too. So rubber hardness keeps rising.
And I recently had a new observation. Glued on the backhand, for equally old rubber with equally obvious surface scaling, harder rubber’s support is still better, so pace-borrowing defense is steadier, and when firing on underspin, it holds up better, with attacks less prone to the slipping of soft rubber. For example, on my Yazhi KLC backhand, I glued a T80 and a T05 both used three or four months (though the sponge hardness is the same, because the pips differ, the T05 seems harder); the T05’s flick, firing support, stability and ball quality are still better. The T80 seems very prone to slipping. This perhaps points to: a harder rubber, at least in actual use lifespan, lasts longer than soft rubber.
3
Forehand and backhand rubber hardness are ever closer, especially in the professional realm. On one hand, their two-wing attacks are ever more balanced — many are even directly backhand systems. Before, many of us had a good forehand and weak backhand, so a backhand rubber clearly softer than the forehand was reasonable. Now the style may differ. On the other hand, backhand rubber’s demand for attack-defense support is ever higher. So hardening is common. Among my amateur-expert friends, many who used T05 on the backhand unwittingly switched to the harder D05 and D09c. But ultimately, a trend is just a trend. Back to ourselves, choosing “easier to drive through” or “better support” is a trade-off. If you actively get on the offensive a lot, and hard rubber gives many errors and a low landing rate, you naturally settle for softer rubber first. Many amateur forehands have big, sweeping strokes, more needing drive-through, and the rubber actually need not be that hard. But if attack-defense rallies are more numerous, especially on the backhand, I really do see the trend of harder rubber.