Boycott plastic balls

Tassie52 wrote: My own experiences with the plastic ball are in line with the Preston experiment.  If I say nothing to my opponent but simply produce a plastic ball and begin playing, no one says a word.  No one can tell that the ball is not celluloid. If I do tell my opponent then I'm likely to get comments about all the weirdness of the plastic ball - it's heavier/lighter and higher/lower - but after five minutes those issues are simply forgotten.  No one ever thinks to blame the ball for losing a point in the fifth game of any match, because it plays so similarly to what they are used to (mainly Butterfly 3* celluloid) that they've forgotten that they're using something different.

Edited by NextLevel - 03/31/2015 at 2:36am

fatt wrote: he said they do not crack more than any old nittaku premium 3* balls; is that true? he plays weeks, months before he cracks one of those balls; he says he does not care because it did not happen more than before... but but but... the 3* XSF seemless balls have such an attractive, seductive and utlimately winning aura surrounding them. that seamless thing has some magic to it.

Baal wrote: in a blind test at my club a few weeks ago i was more likely to to mistakenly identify NP40+ as celluloid. I picked out the Chinese seamed ball and seamless pretty reliably. Both sre pretty easy to tell from celluloid. Right now celluloid balls feel like they are coming really fast at me because i mostly use seamless. Also when you are playing free it is easier to tell the difference than just doing counters or looping and blocking. For me now plastic is the new normal. I still find Chinese seamed balls require adjustment and it takes me quite awhile. I guess I am a creature of habit.

fatt wrote: for the 1st time I played with plastic double fish 3* seamed balls and the proud owner told me he never had more problems than before the plastic era. is that a ball worth to be tested more or was he just lucky so far?

From Larry Hodges' daily blog about USATT Board meeting:
"Then came a discussion of plastic balls, led by Ed Hogshead, who pointed out the problems of so many balls that play differently being used in different tournaments, and argued for setting a date where we go all plastic in 3-star and above tournaments. The problem is that the different plastic balls themselves are very different themselves, and so unless we settled on one brand, it might not help much. No action was taken here, and most likely all we can do is wait one or two years until the manufacturers fix these problems with a more standardized ball."
WE SHOULD NOT BE PLAYING WITH PLASTIC BALLS AT ALL IN LOCAL TOURNAMENTS AND LEAGUES!!!
I feel better now

Egghead wrote: fatt wrote: for the 1st time I played with plastic double fish 3* seamed balls and the proud owner told me he never had more problems than before the plastic era. is that a ball worth to be tested more or was he just lucky so far? I'll have what he's having . Double fish seamed balls are just a little better than DHS seamed balls. One ball may last few sessions. You cannot go wrong with the seamless balls.

I dunno, I still really like XSF quite a bit. 

Pondus wrote: berndt_mann wrote: boycott all 40 mm. balls.  Back to the future.  It's not too late for the 38 (if you still have any of those suckers). Let's go all out... I say let's go back to rounded wine bottle corks.

It's way easier to adjust to different balls with a hardbat than with inverted rubbers, trust me.  At least ten times easier.

Pondus wrote: Baal wrote: I haven't tried it, haven't even seen a small ball in years.  I am pretty sure know it would be very difficult impossible for me to play with 38 mm and do any of the things I normally do without spraying the ball all over the place and looking like a fool in the short game. But your serves though... they'd be sooooo spinny.

But my short ones would come out so LONG.   

someone said we're going back to celluloid this summer. is that true?

lineup32 wrote: some of us never left..

+1

kurokami wrote: someone said we're going back to celluloid this summer. is that true?

Wasn't that on 1st April?

NextLevel wrote: Pondus, thanks for your observations.  So what is your view of the ball?  Have you played with it?

Some observations from players at about 2200 who have been playing with plastic for a whole season now:

A talented youngster who is about 17 and practices roughly 15 hours a week intensively says that his topsheets rip after 2 weeks. I do not know what rubber he uses. Another player says that everybody will have to move harder rubbers. He personally played with Acuda S3 before the change, then tried T64FX which was still too soft for the new ball and settled with T05 for FH and T05FX for BH. He is still using a Primorac OFF- but is moving to some composite blade because he is at a disadvantage at that level. He estimates that the ball change is bad for 8 people out of 10 and good for only two.

I would not have believed that 30 hours of training can destroy a rubber, I find it appalling actually.

I usually play with Xushaofa, which is the ball my club has adopted. I like that ball. I play well with it. I'm adjusted to the timing. I played a sanctioned tournament yesterday using Nittaku Sha, and it made me want to quit table tennis. I got so pissed. I just couldn't adjust my timing, and I couldn't even land my opening backhand when I was just going for consistency and not power. When the ball dropped to below net level or at table level, I couldn't spin it on with my forehand to save my life. I felt embarrassed, and got really disappointed with myself.