Thick or Thin, Each Has Its Strengths: The Philosophy of Blade Thickness, Part 2
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A thin blade’s backhand is easy and relaxed, while a thick blade’s backhand can feel clumsy — unless your skills run deep, like the player at the start of the previous article.
My old penhold rival from my videos used to wield the Guang Weizi, whose 7.0mm body has punch. But the weakness of a thick blade is this: when you do not have enough room to fully load up, the loops you produce tend to come out with a high arc and weak spin. So I often serve long to pin his backhand, then counter-loop. Since he switched to the Super Lin Yun-Ju at 5.6mm, his backhand has improved — looping faster and snapping more accurately. And a thin blade’s backhand is easier to keep stable.
If you use a thick blade and want your backhand to be threatening, you had better open up the space and loop boldly.
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By thinning the blade body, you gain more shot-making flexibility, and generating spin gets easier too.
But if you want faster speed off the opponent’s pace, and against the new plastic ball you want a stronger sense of power than before, then you can thicken the blade body — say from the Innerforce Layer ALC’s 6.0mm to the Ovtcharov ALC’s 6.2mm. A thick blade rebounds more easily and borrows pace more springily and economically. For instance, in the last Olympic cycle, Boll, hampered by injury, switched from the Boll ALC to the 7mm-thick, quicker-borrowing Primorac Carbon. He first won the men’s singles title at the 2021 European Championships. The women’s champion that year, Polcanova, used Joola’s Nobilis, also a hinoki-faced, 3+2 thick blade. Thickening raises the blade’s stiffness, and stiffness means a quicker sense of speed and more concise, powerful rallying.
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Between thick and thin lies the differing demand for spin or speed, for active initiation or passive support. Butterfly’s upcoming chopping blade is getting thinner and thinner — easier to attack with, and less able to withstand loops. Thick and thin also express the blade maker’s differing demand for ease of control versus a higher ceiling. My own Yaonie went from 6.0mm down to 5.7mm, and I finally understood what I wanted: my blade is made for the wider amateur crowd. You do not have to chase the ceiling of bottom power, because that may mean a higher threshold for generating power. Playing with it could get tiring.
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When the Hejin Carbon and Hejin Carbon Pro both happened to settle at around 5.6mm, perhaps Stiga had come to trust the strength of this alloy-carbon fiber. Because the tougher the fiber, the thinner the blade is allowed to be. So in fact the so-called alloy carbon is nothing but Kevlar carbon. We have seen the 5.8mm Vis and Boll ALC, and also the 5.6mm Super Zhang Jike and Super Lin Yun-Ju.
Of course, 5.8mm is sometimes made to 5.7mm by error, and 5.6mm sometimes ends up thicker — all man-made, yet not deliberate. Because Butterfly says the Viscaria’s thickness has never changed; marking it 5.7 or 5.8 is fine, just a typo. Originally written 5.7, now written 5.8 — every typo, in the eyes of the attentive, is a deliberate adjustment, an exquisite bit of design.
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A couple of years ago, when players asked me how to choose the thickness of the 968, I would say: go for around 6mm. Because back then, the 968’s build did not give the backhand solid enough support, while the forehand did not lack ball-gripping feel. Choosing a slightly thicker one could marginally strengthen the stiffness and the backhand’s borrowed support. But changes in manufacturing may make us fine-tune views we once held firmly.