Weekly Equipment Watch 244: Gear Trends at the All-Japan Championships
This content has limitations, leaning more toward Japanese brands. And Japan’s table tennis philosophy really differs from ours. But you can roughly see some current gear-use trends. Tallied is the All-Japan Championships men’s and women’s gear use, including adult and junior groups — 23 men, 22 women.
Men: Astonishing Z03 Use, D09c Up, More Outer Blades
On the backhand, the Z03’s use rate is Top 1, about half the players. On the forehand, a quarter of players use Z03 too. Undoubtedly, this is the trend. Over the past year, watching Tomokazu Harimoto and Sora Matsushima’s matches, especially the Z03’s backhand use — it is actually not as spinny as Butterfly’s official figures say, even “ignoring the spin’s influence as much as possible.” Though it can loop-drive to make the opponent feel pinned, the richness of spin variation is average. But it is still very ball-holding, and very fast. You can recklessly jam and ramp up speed with the backhand. Japanese players’ winning philosophy now is mainly speed. This time the junior men’s singles champion is Kawakami Ryusei, setup outer SALC custom plus ZYRE-03 on both sides. A typical representative of the current gear trend. In actually choosing rubber, we should analyze from at least three elements what we score by: spin, speed or power. Often it can be a combination. For example, for our national players, why is boosted Hurricane first? Because spin is very important, absolute ball quality (sense of power, killing power) is very important, and this killing power must show in the first three balls as much as possible. But the Japan team is different. We rarely hear their ball is very spinny, but they slowly make us feel a trend: very good at defense, very fast in rallying. This and the rubber achieve each other. Before the ZYRE-03 appeared, Dignics rubbers’ use rate was first. Compared with last year, D09c’s use rate still rose a bit, D05’s users decreased. Pursuing higher speed while pursuing stability — so D09c is still important. Of the 23 men, 11 used outer, 9 inner. Last year inner exceeded half. This year may just be coincidence, or more players are trying to ramp up speed.
Women: Inner Blades Dominate, Varied Styles, Varied Rubber
Of the 22 women, 14 are shakehand loop-attack, 4 shakehand heterogeneous fast-attack (pips), 3 shakehand chop, 1 penhold. Inner blades’ use rate exceeded half, reflecting that women still pursue blade ball-holding and stability more. On rubber, the Z03 is almost absent — only one, Nina Hayata using Z03 on the backhand. Besides that, none. Below is a link to the Japan women’s singles top 16’s gear use. On forehand rubber, blue national Hurricane and D09c make up about two-thirds.