Plastic balls debacle (to all TDs out there)

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   I was very disheartened when I saw that some of the best tournaments in the country decided to switch to plastic plastic balls for their tournaments. Among them - NA Teams, Westchester Open (and probably many others).

Those are great tournaments but I am sure everyone knows the reasons behind my feelings 
a) cost of the new balls – of course, in the case of tournaments, the balls 
are provided by the organizers;but there is hidden cost for the participants who naturally have to get at 
least some practice with the plastic balls if they want to perform well at the “plastic” tournaments. My 
calculations based on what I see from our club play in the last two months, show that the cost of 
the new balls is about6 times higher (!!) – taking into account their pricing and their horrible 
lifespan.

b) the fact that the plastic balls are so short-lived doesn’t mean just the 
budget problem. It means
that the balls are poorly made, that the material is not uniformly 
distributed along the spherical surface (and we all know how precise the TT balls have to be in order for them to be 
playable). This leads to bad, inconsistent bounce.

Notice that I am not talking about their slower speed or spin (or sound) – 
that is something we can get used to;  after all that would be similar to the changes that we all had to make 
in 2000 when the entire world switched to 40 mm balls. No, I am talking about quality and pricing – and 
both are horrible at the moment. Even the better plastic balls – such as Andro, XuShaoFa, Kinson – are 
noticeably inferior to the average, 1 dollar apiece celluloid balls. I am not even talking about NIttaku 
Premium or TSP 3-star ($1.5-1.8 each for celluloid; in plastic they will probably be priced at $3-3.50).

If it were up to me, I would wait as many years as necessary until 
manufacturers finally came up with plastic balls which are virtually indistinguishable from current celluloid 
balls in quality of the bounce, quality of production and lifespan. It should not be our problem that some 
bureaucrats decided that celluloid is in danger of being banned all over the world, then realized it 
was not true, but since they couldn’t admit they screwed up they went ahead anyway, especially after 
manufacturers realized all the possible financial ramifications.

But as it stands now, ITTF has no intention of doing that, which only 
encourages people to come up with conspiracy theories and wild guesses about corruption and greed. After all, 
if an average club player (2-3 times a week practice) will have to spend $250-400 a year instead of 
$30-50 just for the balls, what is going to happen?

Nothing good – mainly, a whole lot of players WILL NOT use plastic balls in 
their club matches. What that will mean, is that less  players (on average) will take part in 
“plastic” tournaments, including our best high-level competitions. And that is not good for our 
sport. Not good at all.
Even if in few years plastic balls will have become much better and 
cheaper, we will still lose many
players, and the tournaments on average will attract even less 
participants.

So my plea is – for all the TDs out there, please think hard and think 
smart. I beg you, do not switch to plastic balls until you are 100% satisfied with their quality and their 
pricing. Granted, this might take a few years, but that should not be our concern. Please reject the bad choice 
that ITTF (and alas, USATT as well) are posing before us.

We should tell them (with our words, and with our actions) that they are 
wrong, that they are hurting the sport, and their  reasons are not only invalid but they are (or at least, seem to 
be) highly suspect. 

Thanks everybody for your attention – I know this was a lot of words . I just felt I really needed to pour it all out. Who knows, maybe someone will listen...