Courtesy of Manfred Grumbach, former 1. Bundesliga player, ex coach of
SSV Reutlingen (ETTU Team Champion), trainer, author of table tennis
books and various articles.
Long pimple rubbers / Friction
Preliminary Remarks
We, and we hope everybody else, appreciate the ITTF-regulation, that it is
forbidden to manipulate pimples afterwards. To me, the aim of this regulation
is, that every player should know, which sort of rubbers he is playing against
without having to check or touch the opponent’s rubber, which he is not allowed
to do anyway. Manipulating an original rubber means cheating. This has been
forbidden before, and should be forbidden in future. No more is needed.
Arguments:
· Since, according to the official ITTF regulation, the aspect ratio of long
pimples has changed from 1.3 to 1.1, the pimples cannot buckle/fold any
more (like before for example Curl P1 or Feint Long). This has been checked
and acknowledged by various researches, and has been realized and
confirmed by the players. The effect has been ever since, that the bounce of
the ball is not unpredictable any more.
· After the aspect ratio had been changed, there have still been two different
group of pimple out rubbers on the market: 1. pimple out rubbers with friction
and 2. without friction. Since only the frictionless rubbers are being discussed,
I would like to concentrate on the advantages and disadvantages of these
rubbers.
· The effect of frictionless rubbers is mainly an anti-top effect. That means,
that the opponent’s spin is more or less changed into the opposite spin:
Topspin is changed into backspin, backspin into topspin. That’s all. The player
cannot actively produce his own spin, he completely depends on his
opponent’s spin.
Advantages of frictionless long pimpled rubbers:
- The more backspin is being imparted while serving or executing a drop shot,
the more dangerous and effective the „aggressive pushing“ technique (also
referred to as „Offensive slice“)can be performed.
- The more spin you produce while serving, the more backspin can be
produced while returning the service through chopping with frictionless long
pimples
- The more spin is being imparted on the ball by the attacking player while
serving, the more careful he has to be while performing his first attacking shot.
- Serving returning as well as very effective chopping close to the table are
both easier to perform thanks to the frictionless surface of the rubber
Disadvantages of frictionless long pimpled rubbers:
- Basically the spin of the ball is simply being reversed. This means that a
player cannot produce spin by himself. A skilful and experienced player should
be able to take advantage of this.
- The less spin is being imparted by the attacking player while serving, the
more harmless will be the return.
- The less spin is being produced while looping, the less backspin is being
returned.
- Almost all players, especially those in lower leagues, know about the effect,
and after a certain time of practising, are well able to cope with it. Even more,
they can turn it into their advantage. Therefore, many players are happy, when
they meet players with frictionless rubbers in matches.
For this reason top players (Ding Song/Joo/Chen Weixing etc.) don’t use
frictionless rubbers.
Summing up, I would like to point out, that I really object to manipulating
rubbers, not because of the effect, but because of the cheating element
mentioned above. On the other hand, I would never appreciate a general
banning of frictionless pimple out rubbers, because they are liked and played
by so many defensive players, and because it is not necessary.
Best regards
Manfred Grumbach
Final remarks to the subject „Defending with long pimples“
1. Material: In fact, the development of materials for attacking and defending
players went parallel. The tendency to faster and stickier offensive rubbers,
„tuned“ additional by speed glue, was answered by the change from classical
pimple out rubbers („Barna”) via Anti-top rubbers onto the modern long pimple
rubbers. Still, you cannot speak of “equality of weapons”. By using tricky
services the offensive players can profit from their material much better and
more undisturbed than defenders can. That’s why it is difficult to understand,
why there are permanently taken measures against the material of defending
players. As mentioned above, the range of approved long pimple rubbers at the
moment do not buckle/fold any more and therefore the produced strokes are
predictable. By this fact, the main argument for measures against long
pimples, with friction and without friction, has dropped out. Anyway, both
versions of pimple out rubbers have their specific advantages and
disadvantages.