1952 Invention of Sponge

I think that's when people lost interest in the sport in the US.

this full documentary is a propaganda piece about how sponge ruined the tt game....

...it's basically an hour of marty reisman crying about how 'he was the best player who's ever played the game' but will never get that credit because sponge came out and 'over athleticized' the sport

....reisman actually says in the documentary (i'm paraphrasing but only slightly), "the sponge allowed the less talented players to rise to the top while the ultra talented hardbat champions were eliminated from competition altogether"


EDIT

I also forgot to mention that reisman says, 'he was so amazing with a sponged rubber that it just wasn't fun to play with it because he was too good'.

That guy is a huge asshole.  I'm glad sponge came out when it did so he never got a chance to be the best player in the world - he's only a legend in his own mind.


Edited by roar - 05/11/2011 at 9:42pm

I can see having fun with hardbat, but playing with just sponge feels weird. You might as well play with a cupcake.

Gotta love how they splice that clip of a samurai in whenever they talk about the Japanese.

i have this movie... BBC documentary

Actually sponge made a major impact at the Vienna Worlds in the previous year (1951) when the accredited modern inventor of a sponge bat, Waldemar Fritsch of Austria, caused havoc among the top players during the team events, although he was eliminated from the singles eventually.

racquetsforsale wrote: I think that's when people lost interest in the sport in the US.

roar wrote: That guy is a huge asshole.  I'm glad sponge came out when it did so he never got a chance to be the best player in the world - he's only a legend in his own mind.

igorponger wrote: Here is a true story of how the sponge was introduced into the sport. http://www.ittf.com/museum/TTIscans/TTI63SpongePart2.pdf http://www.ittf.com/museum/TTIscans/TTI60TurbulentFifties.pdf

This is great! Thank you.

I can see why Marty was pissed.  But technology always marches forward, and no one can stop progress, good or bad...
Half of the fun for table tennis players nowadays is EJing. 

wturber wrote: roundrobin wrote: I can see why Marty was pissed.  But technology always marches forward, and no one can stop progress, good or bad... Half of the fun for table tennis players nowadays is EJing.  The problem is when the new technology is significantly disruptive.  Baseball sticks with wooden bats.  Tennis has allowed the racket to slowly evolve, but drew a line in the sand (or clay?) when spaghetti stringing came out. I strongly suspect that the 1959 compromise of 4mm sandwich was considered to be a reasonable compromise and not too disruptive.  It was impossible for them to see what could be done with 4mm of covering using modern rubber technology and the glue effect was probably pretty much unknown. We are actually now at a level of disruption due to a wide variety of surfaces that sounds almost exactly like what Johnny Leach described in 1959 while expressing how happy he was with the new covering rules. FWIW, EJijng  is only about 2.853% of the fun in table tennis for me.

You know I am all for hardbat, but after two years of running LATTA round robins and asking many people (other than the usual players) to try hardbat led me to an interesting conclusion... Hardbat will never be accepted by current and future generation of young players precisely because it lacks the choice to win points by either extreme spin or power.  Spin+power is what intrigues these young players, not consistency and placement.  There's simply no turning back to hardbat as the main surface, imho... Hardbat should be more widely accepted in regular play, definitely, but not as the main focus as what they are also doing with sandpaper.  Their efforts to do so will only prove to be divisive for the sport in the long term, and I suspect that's their motive. 
I am not against it, though, as everyone needs something to aim for in life, and I do love hardbat. 

the lost interest because the top players of the moment . marty and his gang decided to stay away form international tournaments and rely their time playing old fashioned harbat. there were no top players in usa until semiller and bogan showed up

roundrobin wrote: You know I am all for hardbat, but after two years of running LATTA round robins and asking many people (other than the usual players) to try hardbat led me to an interesting conclusion... Hardbat will never be accepted by current and future generation of young players precisely because it lacks the choice to win points by either extreme spin or power.  Spin+power is what intrigues these young players, not consistency and placement.  There's simply no turning back to hardbat as the main surface, imho... Hardbat should be more widely accepted in regular play, definitely, but not as the main focus as what they are also doing with sandpaper.  Their efforts to do so will only prove to be divisive for the sport in the long term, and I suspect that's their motive.  I am not against it, though, as everyone needs something to aim for in life, and I do love hardbat.

I guess it depends a lot on how you play it.  At the near 2000 level, I regularly win points using spin and power. Is it less spin and power than can be had with inverted?  Yes, absolutely.  But it is more than enough to win points.

The other thing I enjoy is nullifying the spin and power of the inverted player.  Maybe after they experience more of that, they'll be less enamored of inverted.  And here's the thing.  I'm a 51 year old guy who isn't training full time.  I'd love to see what some kid could do with hardbat if they put all their effort into it.  The simple fact is that NOBODY is doing that at a serious level.

But actually, for any young kid who is looking to excel at table tennis, I would not recommend hardbat.  Such kids should definitely choose inverted.  That is the surest way to become national or world class.  Though the truth is that short pips and long pips combo rackets can get you there as well.  Hardbat probably cannot.

Of course, the vast majority of table tennis players are not young.  So maybe it doesn't matter.

What I'd like to see is for hardbat to help expand table tennis to a larger base of recreational players.  I think that's possible because playing with hardbat is easier at the lower levels and new players aren't as likely to become confused by "tricky" spin.  The expanded base could increase the pool of players who would play sponge. 

Can it work that way?  I don't know.  It certainly hasn't so far.  But then, the hardbat "movement" has mostly been grass roots.  So it is hard to say what is possible.  But with competitive table tennis participation having such low participation, it wouldn't take a whole lot to expand a base that is MUCH larger.

Edited by richrf - 12/10/2011 at 3:13pm