New Poly ball review

I have a feeling that if the new balls end up having such a radical infleunce on regular playing habits (spin, curve etc.), the professional players themselves will take up issue with this. Banning speed glue is one thing- the game wasn't altered too much and many players did not speed glue. But this reverts years of training. Players will take up issue with this and if enough professional players say something, then it's not like they will defact to the regular balls but they will be forced to make changes.

all that changes can do is favor some Chinese and harm some other Chinese... 

ttcyfi wrote: Banning speed glue is one thing- the game wasn't altered too much and many players did not speed glue.

At the recreational, and some club levels, no. At some league and professional levels, banning speedglue had a noticeable impact.

But this reverts years of training. Players will take up issue with this and if enough professional players say something, then it's not like they will defact to the regular balls but they will be forced to make changes.

I'm pretty sure that player opinion, whether it be that of a recreational consumer, seasoned club member or even a professional, has little to no bearing on the ITTF's adoption of new rules.

For example:
Low friction LP's were banned, although very few (if any) top 100 players used them. The outcry from the tens of thousands of low-friction LP players and even a protest from a national association did nothing to overturn the ban. It simply meant that consumers went on a spending spree to try and find a suitable replacement.

Plastic balls are sure to develope more true aphletes in the sport....

Obviously, you can not compensate for the spin deficit just through using a new rubber material.
YOU will have to apply much harder physical exertion when looping to put sufficient spin on the plastic ball.
Boys&girls with a massive muscle, full of physical vigour will dominate the sport throughout, from the top to the basement playing level.   
Looking forward to seeing this generation of "sturdy" players in next five years.

Lazy legged. flaccid body guys should seek to improve their physical fitness, I guess.

Edited by igorponger - 05/29/2012 at 2:49pm

It's hard to believe that the presence of a seam has a big impact on spin.

If it did, then the ball would behave very differently depending on the orientation of the ball when you hit it. How could you achieve any consistency with spinny shots?

The baseball analogy is poor, as the seams on a baseball are distributed more or less evenly across the surface of the sphere. Far different from a simple equatorial seam like a TT ball. Apples and oranges.

Even if the ball corrected itself such that the axis of spin is always in a constant relationship with the axis of the seam (which it doesn't!), some shots would reach this state sooner than others, depending on the axis the ball started at.

I just don't buy it.

djnelsen wrote: It's hard to believe that the presence of a seam has a big impact on spin. ...

Two possibilities:
1) the seam does have a big impact on spin AND it really doesn't matter much what orientation it has. I could how this could be possible. With parallel orientation you have a seam against the air through 360 degrees of spin and at the fastest moving surface. With perpendicular orientation, you have the seam across the whole width of the ball but it only comes around twice every revolution.

Have you guys totally forgotten the ball is larger?, the answer to why it doesn't spin is quite obvious. There's no point looking under rocks for mystery seam theory

Edited by bluebucket - 05/29/2012 at 4:27pm

djnelsen wrote: kickass wrote:  With parallel orientation you have a seam against the air through 360 degrees of spin and at the fastest moving surface. With perpendicular orientation, you have the seam across the whole width of the ball but it only comes around twice every revolution. And those two scenarios effect spin the same way? What about every other possible orientation of the seam? They all effect spin in the same way?

Not the same way. I'm guessing they even out. Total effect is parallel effct + perpendicular effect. You get less of one as you get more of the other.

Difference with spin and angular momentum is that spin (rotations/sec) is the same for every part of the ball. Angular momentum for a ball as a whole is a mediated value for the celluloid.

To explain this : If for a sidespin serve the marking is at the top the marking could be seen from above spinning but staying at same position. Contact the ball on top for a powerfull brushloop can be a good choice to return such a serve because the angular momentum for the celluloid at the top is far less then for the front of the ball, where the equator for the spin would be contacted.
With a seam at the equator this difference is even bigger.

So thinking in terms of angular momentum can be better for tabletennis. Offcourse I can just as well say that the ball has more spin at the equator. Then I would just use the term spin as just an other word for angular momentum. That,s a bit off from fysics standard terms (not necessaly a problem).

For fysics spin is rotations to time ratio  as far as I know and no matter where a ball is contacted or viewd this is the same for every part of it.
I think even most tabletennisplayers think of spin as rotations to time.

When they would make these balls with different frequencies for the two spindles (one spindle+mold does sort of a screw with salto from other spindle) the result could at least be a more fun/exciting ball to play with.
Too much symmetrie always tends to make things boring.







Edited by mercuur - 05/30/2012 at 6:13am

William Henzell did a pretty nice review of the new balls as well:

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why disaster? In 2016 everybody will have had the same time (not) to adjust for it.

arg0 wrote: why disaster? In 2016 everybody will have had the same time (not) to adjust for it.

I think before everyone gets carried away about the new ball there are two important things to remember...

1. As far as I am aware all the new balls floating around are samples. There are no mass produced balls yet which indicates that the ball is still being developed. Until we get mass produced versions you won't know excatly what the new ball will be like to play with.

2. Regardless of the diffeerences present in the new ball, table tennis will remain to be a game where one player faces another (or pair vs pair) and the better player on the day will win. This is no different to other factors that influence the game such as extreme temps, high humidity (makes looping very hard), lots of noise or other external factors. Both players have the same opportunities. To complain that the new ball has ruined your game is like a garage player being smashed by ma long and the saying (I would beat him if I trained more).