Just say no to the new poly balls. Sign petition!!

Since I am playing with the new ball I have chronic pain in my shoulder, so bad that I had to stop playing competitions, even thinking that I may need a cortisone infiltration or an operation. I am pretty sure this is due to my natural efforts to achieve the spin I had with the older balls

hookumsnivy wrote: I actually like the plastic balls now. It took a while to get used to them and the different bounce, but once I got that I have no complaints. It's also possible that I no longer remember what it's like to play with celluloid. I typically use the XFA balls and I have no complaints with them anymore. Lately I'm far more likely to lose a ball when someone doesn't give it back, than I am to break one The difference between the balls is by far the biggest problem. I was playing against some college kids prepping for their tournaments and they were using doublefish balls. The doublefish balls were extremely different in terms of the bounce, felt heavier, and didn't have the same consistency. I felt like with celluloid you could easily switch between balls and not really notice a difference unless 1 was really old.

For some reason Igor has decided to bring a very old thread back to life with something completely irrelevant to our sport.

ITTF never changes their mind about anything and ball companies have invested vast sums to be able to deal with new ball sizes and new materials.  We are never going back to 38 or 40 mm balls, and at some point in the not too distant future celluloid balls will no longer exist.  There is no saying "no" now.  Players complained a lot, it should be noted.  But they have no power in our sport compared to the power that NBA players have in negotiating with the NBA.  It should also be noted that the NBA leadership has always been pretty good, especially compared to the very low bar of Adham Sharara.

At this point, in the year 2018, bearing in mind that 40+ balls were introduced in 2014, it is really time to stop a lot of complaining and just move on.  The biggest reason that 40+ balls are different is because of the "+".  They are 0.07 grams heavier and as much as 0.7 mm larger and that is a big effect in our sport.

The question that matters at this point are which are the best 40+ balls? 

The material matters, and cellulose acetate was a terrible material that gave rise to terrible balls, and chances are those will disappear before too long. Almost nobody liked them.  A lot of the negative impressions about "the plastic ball" were because those particular 40+ balls are so bad.

Whether the ball has a seam or not is also a factor, but perhaps less so if the weight and diameters get a little closer to the same from one brand to another.

What matters about the 40+ balls are (1) bounce height (2) bounce reliability (3) roundness, (4) trajectory in the air which often relates to surface texture (5) price (6) durability.  This has always been true, actually.

Questions about whether one ball has "more spin" than another immediately bog down because we (as forum members) can't measure the amount of the spin in revs/sec and can only infer spin from how the ball behaves in terms of arch, bounce, and effects on paddle -- really complex phenomena -- and it leads to endless debates based on really subjective impressions.  And that means people can use the same balls and come to different impressions because they are actually not focusing on the same thing, but they are still calling it "spin".

Thought there's a lot of mixed emotions on the plastic ball, not all players hate them.  I don't hate the plastic ball.

j-bo, let's hope.  By the way, thanks for your work on the petition.  I am pessimistic that anyone ina position of power within the ITTF would care, but you have fought the good fight.

tommyzai wrote: cole_ely wrote: 1000 is a lot of signatures though, if you consider the usatt only has like 5000 active members. personally i don't think the ittf gives a whit what we think. There are more active players in the villages I visit in China than there are in North America. I'm not really sure why we're against the new balls . . . especially if they are seamless. Are there good reasons other than a resistance to change? I would like the opportunity to try the new ball and decide for myself. If I hate it . . . count me in and I will rally the groups. If I like it or don't really see or feel much difference . . . count me in for a dozen of the new balls!

I think that TTNPP has some if you want to try.. But I may be mistaken

cole_ely wrote: 1000 is a lot of signatures though, if you consider the usatt only has like 5000 active members. personally i don't think the ittf gives a whit what we think.

Edited by tommyzai - 01/06/2014 at 4:33pm

Interesting to re-read this thread.

A whole year has gone by and even with the foregone conclusion the poly ball is coming and all the info that has been posted across many forums, the petition gets a few signees every now and then.

I hadn't promoted it much after it not getting to 1,000 signatures in a short period of time and stopped after early 2013 after contacting all the clubs I could..but surprised it still gets some action.

Tinykin wrote: To Jay and Baal, I've seen some very good posts from you guys before. But I think that you both have exceeded yourselves in this thread. Well done!!! Especially Jay, your obviously researched contributions were brilliant. Cheers for the new year........Courvoisier and MYTT goes together well.

I agree with you Tinykin... both have said things a lot better than I could come up with.

fatt, I add again that when corporate interests make money, perhaps there is a little reward--a thank you if you will-- for the people who made it all possible.

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.   

Baal wrote: Mastermind wrote: Actually, giving people slower equipment you increase the role of athleticism. Perhaps takes more athleticism to generate power with slower equipment, but this is more than compensated by extra athleticism required to cover space in the face of an opponent with lots of speed and power.  That's a different conversation, though.

Yes, different conversation.  But given that it came up, I'll post my short disagreement and not follow-up.  In practice it doesn't tend to work out the way you suggest because the faster gear makes it much easier to make a shot that is unreturnable ... that you can't get to.  Points end more quickly resulting in less energy being expended.  You could argue that explosive power becomes more important with fast gear though.  But that's a fairly limited definition of athleticism.

Playing sandpaper (very slow) can really wear you out because so many more balls can be retrieved and the points will last longer.

pingpongpaddy wrote: Good answer!! but you do consistently fail to address my point that the hazards are in the large scale storage of celluluse products, where there have been many fires particularly paints

Did you mean cellulose or nitrocellulose?  Cellulose includes a myriad of paper products - like toilet paper and napkins. 

pingpongpaddy wrote: Good answer!! but you do consistently fail to address my point that the hazards are in the large scale storage of celluluse products, where there have been many fires particularly paints

No.  I've actually answered that by showing how low the costs of dealing with that hazard must be considering the price of low quality balls that have the same flammable qualities and hence the same storage issues.  Typical 3* ball costs are about five to ten times the cost of lower quality training balls.  You can even get low quality balls for as low as 10 cents (U.S.) each. That's 1/20th the price of a Nittaku 3* Premium.  And that's a retail price. The overall costs to the seller must be lower than 10 cents a ball and that cost must include raw materials, manufacturing, and shipping costs.  So the storage costs are necessarily quite low and the "premium" caused by the flammability issue or non-issue must be a fraction of the storage costs.

Also, the hazards of the finished ball were not originally what Sharara claimed as a problem.  The claim was hazards to workers due to fibers.  I don't know how the flammability question ever even worked its way into the discussion.  Maybe the ITTF or Sharara mentioned it later.  But so far I've only seen it brought up by others online who don't seem to have thought the real risks and costs all the way through. The cost of a typical $1 three star tournament ball is almost completely unaffected by the issue of flammability in storage.  The overwhelmingly largest factor seems to be quality control in manufacturing (how many balls you have to make to get one to pass a 3* quality test series) and/or marketing & branding.

pingpongpaddy wrote: On Distrust, well I dont see the ITTF as an evil empire, more a mixture of bumbling incompetence, and occasional good ideas.

I see it as possibly corrupt (like IOC or FIFA).  International sports federations answer to no-one because they are international.  ITTF is such a small scale operation that very few people notice or care, but there is potentially money to be made in the form of kickbacks for a variety of things.  There is no transparency, and the many demonstrably false statements from ITTF --at the very least grossly imprecise statements, if you want to be charitable --make it easy to suspect the worst.  They have earned the skepticism their statements produce.  

They are not responsive to their constituency.  They have forced through a variety of changes that players at pretty much all levels do not like and they seem surprised by the unintended consequences.  I see them as more or less having jobs for life, and I think they do what they can to keep it that way.  That is particularly disturbing.  I would feel a lot better about things if the people running this sport had once played at an international level. 

Obviously, forcing through rules that are unenforceable or worse, capriciously enforceable -- is incompetent.  How many false positives are occurring from ENEZ machines and other machines for enforcing the new rules?  How did the manufacturers get the contracts?  Do the machines really work as advertised in the hands of the people actually using them?  What are the controls and calibrations?  I have seen these machines used and as a professional scientist, I find the procedures laughable.  The serve rule seems designed to produce controversy, since the umpires cannot possibly see if it is being broken.  (Also, there was no problem that really needed fixing).  It came to roost at the Olympics. 

My personal opinion is that nearly every rule change from scoring to 2008 glue ban, booster ban, serving changes, etc.  has been an attempt to remove the role of athleticism in the sport and make it more of a parlor game.  Maybe it is part of a misguided attempt to reduce Chinese dominance of the sport, which will always fail if that is the intent.  It has certainly resulted in vastly increasing the costs of the sport. Some people have argued that current regime has done some good things for our sport.  I don't see it.  I just don't.  For sure, they are unaccountable and like it that way.

With age, my athleticism is diminishing.  I have good technique, which slows the decline.  But I should be less competitive as time goes on.  It's a sport!  That's how it should be!!

   

Baal wrote: pingpongpaddy wrote: Hi Baal My stance is based on the idea that the poly ball material has been chosen with a view to reducing the tt balls 'Hazardous Material profile'(flammable or otherwise). If it turns out that it has a 'significant Hazardous Material Profile' I would be in line to condemn it, but so far I have not heard of such an issue. Do you have info you want to share? My information is based only on the organic chemistry courses I took as an undergraduate, and based on that I know the factories will have to use all kinds of dangerous stuff -- solvents and other raw materials -- to make these new plastic balls.  They will also have many dangerous wastes to dispose.  This I know.  All of this is perfectly manageable of course, that's why there is a plastics industry.  But this is also true with current processes.  I am certainly not in the least bit concerned with the "flammability" of current balls.  Seriously. They do not spontaneously combust!!!!!!  I reserve judgement on how the new balls will play until we all get some, but there are many reports that they are giving up on the seamless design.  I am concerned that the new balls will be bigger.  I am concerned that they will cost much more.  They will be less porous, and will therefore move through the air a bit differently, and also react to the table differently.  So I wait and see, maybe we will like it eventually.  It may be that new companies will move into the manufacture of balls, which could be a good thing, but remains to be seen.  In the end, though, I am struck by the fact that the justification given by ITTF does not seem to hold water.  Bear in mind that flammability was not one of them.  So I distrust their motives.

On the flammability, I am not concerned about the flammability of the current ball from 'a combust in my sports bag' point of view. I am merely aware that in wharehouse quantities they have hazardous qualities, which will effect the costs of those that store them, and that those costs inevitably are fed back to the consumer. Reduction of those Hazardous qualities, I hope will result in a reduction of costs to the likes of us.
On Distrust, well I dont see the ITTF as an evil empire, more a mixture of bumbling incompetence, and occasional good ideas.
I still enjoyed tt with a barna plastic, though i always changed to nittaku or tsp when i could