Choosing a Shakehand Blade, Starting From the Handle, Part 1
My deepest impression of handles as a kid was probably Kong Linghui’s gourd-shaped aramid carbon. Later I saw the gourd-handled Zhang Yining ZLC and Chen Meng’s Carbon 45.
They say the best blade should be a natural extension of the hand. This most ergonomic AN handle fits snugly against the palm, giving a steady-as-a-rock control feel. But how could the answers of this world be so straightforward and singular?
A tighter, more stable connection also points toward the rigid and lifeless. A gourd handle’s blade-angle adjustment relies more on the wrist than the fingers. As we age, we discover: we still need to give each other a little space — flexibility brings more comfort, and inspiration too.
When choosing a shakehand blade, what is the best standard? Maybe the striking feel, performance, structure, weight — but choosing from the handle is sometimes the most important step. For the current me, as long as the grip is comfortable, I can adapt to most performance.
The April issue of Tabletennis Kingdom magazine had a piece discussing shakehand handles. Let us combine some of that information and talk about shakehand handles today.
FL is currently mainstream, with an overwhelming advantage. The ST handle, once on par with FL in overseas markets, has shrunk a lot now. The gourd-shaped AN trends toward rarity, appearing only in a few models from makers like Butterfly. See — stability is not necessarily best.
The Overwhelming Advantage of FL
In the traditional view, FL favors the forehand and lets you fling; ST favors flexible forehand-backhand transitions. Among our national players, FL has always been the absolute mainstream. Occasionally an oddity like Kong Linghui, Zhang Yining or Chen Meng appears, and then over many years, only occasionally a Yu Ziyang briefly used an ST-handle Viscaria.
At the All-Japan Championships, the FL handle is now overwhelmingly dominant and still growing. Of the 39 shakehand players who competed in January 2008, 12 were FL (about 31 percent) and 23 were ST (about 59 percent). By January 2017, of 47 shakehand players, 38 were FL and 9 were ST. By this January, 40 were FL and 3 were ST.
Actually, in my own blade sales, I have found a similar trend. I have now discontinued the ST-handle Moyu. Whether to keep making ST handles for new blades, or in what quantity, is a bit of a dilemma. Because compared with the best-selling FL handles of the Yazhi series, that ST handle — though I think its grip feel is perfect — really did not sell much.
In Japan’s amateur market, FL exceeds half, but ST still holds more than 30 percent of shakehand players. Beyond that, AN and CO handles still exist in small numbers.
How FL Became the Trend
In the latter half of the 1980s, the Swedish team entered its golden age, and at the time the three horsemen — Waldner, Persson and Appelgren — all used ST handles. This handle favors changing your grip at every moment of contact, with extremely high flexibility. Wang Tao, men’s singles silver at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, also used an ST handle for a more convenient backhand.
Ma Wenge and Kong Linghui, later sent to Europe to train, probably influenced by the European atmosphere of the time, chose AN handles. Back then, besides ST, AN was also very popular in Europe.
At the 2001 Osaka World Championships, Wang Liqin swept three golds in men’s singles, doubles and team. Perhaps it was because of him that the trend in shakehand handles began to be rewritten. In the men’s singles final, Wang Liqin beat Kong Linghui 3-2; in style, he escaped the close-table tangle with Kong Linghui and his own disadvantage in speed, rallying half a step back, winning by quality.
At the time, my father, watching the match, told me to break spin with power. It seems that from the moment Wang Liqin won, table tennis moved more toward the metric of power, and the FL handle — symbolizing stronger forehand power — gradually became the mainstream of the table tennis world.
To be continued.