New Ball Reviewed by Defender

I had a chance to try the new ball last week and thought it might be interesting to post my impressions as a defender. If there are other reviews/videos of defenders trying the ball I would be interested to compare notes. Before trying the ball I had already seen the review by William Henzell and others and had an idea of how the ball would play but tried to keep an open mind.

The ball was of DHS brand and unknown star rating. I guess that the preview balls are the current best quality that manufacturers are able to make. The broken sound is very noticeable at first, but we quickly got used to it. While playing with the ball for about 30 minutes other players where frequently making comments about our ball being broken. We were quick to explain before anyone could step on it :)

We recorded videos of both backhand and forehand chopping and forehand counterlooping. We also made similar videos with the current ball for comparison. 

Backhand Chop

The effects of the new ball might not be obvious from just looking at the video. But looking at the amount of spin after the ball hits the net or the way my opponent miscalculated some of the shots gives an idea. However as a player the effect is very noticeable. Chopping slow and heavy topspins to my long pips would return much less spin than before. My opponent could easily continue looping balls that would have been hard to lift before. The reduced spin on brush chops also makes variation between spin and no-spin chops less effective. My opponent commented that on faster loop drives with solid contact between the ball and the pips more spin was returned.

On the forehand side I usually don't chop much but tried it a bit to see if it behaved differently than with the pips. My impression was that when forehand chopping the amount of spin was more similar to the current ball. Counterlooping with forehand was relatively easy, but the ball seemed to bounce a bit higher off the bat. Particurlarly when doing sidespin hook (banana) loops the trajectory of the ball was much higher and needed adjustment. The amount of spin also appeared to be a good deal less.

For comparison here is some videos with the current ball:

Regular ball backhand chop: http://youtu.be/cOjI9OHLoC8, forehand: http://youtu.be/NLVUpoX4e4Y, serve, return and opening against chop:  http://youtu.be/rWinajX1n0o

Overall impression is that the ball has less spin. Specifically brushing the ball produces less spin while solid contact will give spin comparable to the old ball. Playing with the new ball I also had the feeling of having a bit more time. This may have been caused by the ball bouncing higher.

About the durability of the ball we did not notice any problems. I don't know how much the ball has been used before but it was not a new ball. One interesting observation was that the ball became discolored and picked up some of the blue color of the table.

After trying the new ball I'm worried about the effect it will have on the game. If the final version is similar to the one we tried I'm thinking that it will be easier for offensive players to loop or loop drive everything (like Xu Xin or Ryu Seungmin). Modern defenders that would use spin variation to get an easy ball to attack will have less opportunities to do so. Old school defenders like Chtchetinine will find it even harder to win points.

One positive effect may be longer rallies as less spin when brushing the ball will reduce service spin and we would have less easy popups. But perhaps at the cost of less spectacular rallies. Maybe we will no longer see rallies like in the "Power of side-spin" video on youtube. But its a bit too early to say before we see how top players adjust to the ball.

I think that at my level defense will still be a viable style. But even on that level we will probably see more of the defenders worst nightmare: Players that easily smash chops that are a bit too high. And then I'm not even thinking about short pip hitters.

PS: I'm using Tibhar Grass Defensive with 1 mm sponge on backhand, 2.0mm inverted on forehand and a defensive blade. It would be interesting to see the effect off no-sponge or less spinny pips with more spin continuation.

 

 

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