Long Pimples - Effect of Sponge Thickness

You want what sponge thickness with the pimples? Li Jia Wei of Singapore getting some advice from her bat!

Photo by: Xin Zhou, courtesy of www.ittf.com

Alex Vanderklugt writes:

Greg, I'm a TT player (DIV 1) in Adelaide and I found your article on long Pimples very informative.

Being a LP player myself (837 OX) I was hoping to find some information on sponge thicknesses and what the effects are. I personally use no sponge which gives me good control and the best 'LP effect', but it's hard to attack with or play against deep chops/ pushes. I've tried 1mm, but this seemed to not trouble my opponents at all.

What are you thought on this? Do I need to try say 0.6mm sponge, or perhaps a different LP rubber?

Any comments much appreciated!

This page has moved to here.

Greg is now running the About.com Table Tennis site, and as such a number of these articles will be transferred over to About.com. Please feel free to join me at About!

Readers - Any opinions on sponge thicknesses and long pips you'd care to share? Feel free to email your comments/questions to me, or post your insight in the forum. I'll add your insights in the Comments section below.

COMMENTS

23rd September 2005

Peter Williams wrote:

I guess I know who is using 2mm sponge under long pimples! For reference, it is Hallmark Frustration... I also have 837 1mm and Stiga Destroyer 1mm as experimental rubber on other bats.

Bearing in mind that I have only recently switched to long pimples, and the original intention was to use it to work out how to play AGAINST long pimples, not to keep using them...

I started with Hallmark Super Special 0X, found although it was stunning for defence, that wasn't my game - the ability to turn the game into an attack off the backhand was just too difficult, and required learning totally different techniques, which I don't have time (patience?) to do. Stiga Destroyer was good, but based on the Dean Stretton recommendations, not ideal for close to the table. I decided to go extreme on the sponge, to enable the ball to be countered at speed off the backhand, while still being disruptive - the downside is needing to learn how to turn a chop into an attack, while still maintaining control - as the ball is "flung" back off the 2mm sponge that much faster than the 1mm. Also, blocking is more difficult, due again to the speed off the rubber - although when it goes on, it appears very effective, as the opponent is more rushed for his next shot.

837 1mm is a very easy(!relatively!) rubber to use, and does the defense thing a bit better, than the Frustration 2mm - but for attacking, the 2mm gives me more options (once I learn how to use it, which is Greg's responsibility!). As it has a slightly rough surface, it is also easier to deal with float balls.

I guess it all depends on how much "ease of defense" you are prepared to lose for the ability to attack...

7th January 2006

Adrian Barnes wrote:

Re effect of sponge on long pimples.

One useful article on the subject is: Exploring (long) pip rubber designs http://www.dotnetq.com/tt/longpip.htm