Nittaku Hammond Power

I am going through my yearly binge of EJ-ing, so I decided to try a few rubbers.  I was mostly interested in the Nexy Karis series and I am likely to switch to Karis on either one or both sides of the blade.

I have not tried Rozena, so I can not corroborate that.  Hammond Power is a nice rubber, but not what I am looking for, so it is going to come off the blade.

Nittaku Hammond Power is a little heavier and harder than Beta. I find it spinny for serves and pushes. Topspins of all kinds feel mediumish in spin to me however. Medium sponge. Medium speed.

I've been using it on the forehand. I honestly don't think it's the right rubber for me. If the average modern tensor feels like it's 100 percent boosted, Hammond Power feels like it's 40 percent boosted. It felt like it was begging for 2 layers of booster. So I put on 2 layers of Falco Tempo Long booster and it barely did anything. It didn't hurt the rubber, I didn't lose any control, but I MAYBE feel it's slightly faster on high end shots but even then it's negligible. The thing is though, it only comes in 2.0mm which is Max as the topsheet is also 2.0mm. This means boosting it would make it detectable in competition since it would go over the 4.0mm limit after boosting. They should make at least 1.8 and 1.5mm versions, maybe some thinner than that too as this not a fast rubber. As it is, it feels like Nittaku has spent time developing the topsheet for the new ball and glued it on a classic style sponge.

It is a poorly named rubber. It's not powerful. It's a control type rubber. Though frankly, I consider Xiom Musa 3 to be a better rubber of this type. Musa 1 is also available in thinner thicknesses if you want to go more defensive. Hammond Power is not a bad rubber but it is also not a good rubber so I can't recommend it.

There's really nothing inherently wrong about this rubber. Sure it does some things better than others but as I said, it's not a bad rubber.

What does seriously bother me is that they decided to call it "Power". They could have called it anything other than Power or Speed, marketed it as a high control looping rubber and they would have been accurate. They would have found their demographic of users who would use this rubber for what it is.

Instead, Nittaku has deprived this demographic of a decent rubber and marketed it towards people who are looking for a fast, powerful, speed glue effect rubber and they will be pretty disappointed when they try it.

We too had our equipment tester Patrick review Nittaku Hammond Power as a part of our 4-rubber blind test.