Ruing the Rise of Redundant Rubber Releases
It has recently come to my attention that there are just too many types of table tennis rubber. At the U.S. Open or Nationals the racks of rubber reveal a ruinous range of revolutionary renown. (Okay, I've used up my quota for R's today.) What am I, a full-time professional coach of some renown, supposed to say as my eyes glaze over when someone looks at me with big brown eyes and asks, in all innocence, "Coach Larry, could you explain the differences between Sapphira, Selvid, Solcion, Speedy P.O., Spin Art, the ten types of Sriver, Stayer, Solo, the nine types of Sonex, the three types of Supersonic, Special Defence, Super 729FX, Samba and Samba N-tec, Shark, Snabb, Spring Thunder, the five types of Scramble, Spark, the four types of Spinspiel, Screw One and Screw Soft, Spiral, the three types of Specialist, Samurai, Serie 2000, the three types of Sinus, the eight types of Speedy, Standard, Storm, the two types of Super Defense, and Supra?"
And these are just the ones that start with an S. (See, I've moved on from the R's. Soon I'll make it to the T's, where we can discuss table tennis, topspin, and tomahawk serves.)
I remember the good old days, circa mid-to-late late 1970s (I started in 1976), when everyone used Sriver or Mark V, with the occasional weirdo who used some strange stuff from China or an old-fashioned sheet of D-13, or even some orthodox hard rubber. You could buy Sriver or Mark V (then the top-of-the-line stuff) for about $6/sheet. And then along came Tackiness, the first of the specialized rubbers ("super sticky!") and then long pips, and the floodgates opened. (Where do they get these names? I think they use the Fantasy Name Generator.)