Donic Crest Off

Yup.  The only blades I own now are my two Crest AR+.  Well, apart from a few curiosities which I'd never actually use at the table.  I'm all-in.  

So I've been using P2 on the AR+ for the last month, with occasional switches to my backup AR+ when I've become frustrated with it.  It suits me very well, in fact if I wanted to design a rubber to fit my BH needs, P2 would be it.  However, it can drive me mad at times too.

As you probably know, it's a medium sponge with a super-soft topsheet, with narrow, tall, widely-spaced pips.  It's medium/low throw, and in play is quite close to something like a variation on Bryce Speed or Airoc.  It's very linear (like Airoc), has good topsheet grip (unlike Airoc...), and is a bit lighter than recent ESN rubbers (a nice bonus).  It's quite fast at the top end and is reasonably insensitive to incoming spin.  In fact, the best description I can give is that it's like Airoc but with a far better topsheet.

So, a winner?  Well, yes - on the whole.  It performs amazingly well in certain areas - blocking and hitting are big winners, spin on service is good (which is nice, because that's where you compromise usually with this type of rubber).  It's also surprisingly good in short game control because it lacks low-end bounce, and even chops OK.

Two main things which I'm struggling with though.  Firstly, it really lacks catapult, apart from in the high gears.  Of course, this is contributing to some of the good features above, but I'm used to being able to play a short, wristy shot over the table and use the topsheet catapult to get the pace on the ball.  This doesn't work - the topsheet is so soft and flexible, but lacks elasticity in comparison with something like JP03, so the ball drops off with spin but no power.

The second thing is probably related to the first to be honest.  P2 works well when the ball speed/spin is up during a rally, and it also makes punishing loose high balls a piece of cake.  And in the "soft" areas of the game it allows a lot of control IMO (pushing and drop shots, poking around).  But when you get a low, short ball which drops below net height it needs more effort to play an effective topspin shot than I'd like.  Recently I've started to treat this kind of ball more like a service return and play bananas against them rather than playing a traditional soft topspin shot, and this works much better.  It's a similar thing for long, high, low-spin balls too - easy to hit them, but harder to loop than with JP03.

Basically, P2 works really well for me and then, in specific cases, the ball seems to stall and drop off.  And this isn't the rubber's fault - it's me, of course.  It's important to produce a solid contact on the ball in some way all the time.  If not, I get the impression that the topsheet is muffling the contact and taking pace off the ball.  So I have to play more actively than before to avoid this happening.

I was on the fence about P2, but after spending a bit more time with it I feel that the advantages outweigh the overhead of adapting to it.  I had a similar phase with Airoc M, and ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the effort.  P2 is a step up from Airoc for me though, so it's won out in the end.