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It was many years ago that the ITTF
brought in the rule that one side of the bat needed to be covered with red
rubber, and the other side black. The main reason for this was that a lot of
players used different rubbers on either side of the bat, some dramatically
different, like antispin on one side and a fast spinny rubber on the other. The
idea was that opponents needed to be able to anticipate what was on the incoming
ball by the stroke played by the opponent, and it should not be down to guessing
which rubber they used.
These days a common question is why
certain players, or even whole teams, always use one colour rubber on the
forehand, and the other on the backhand. Are red and black rubbers, even
identical brand and type, inherently different?
Well the consensus is that yes they ARE
different, but for some rubbers it’s much harder to tell than others… For
Chinese tacky rubbers the difference is usually most obvious; the red rubber is
a little less tacky, and the black is a little softer and tackier. The tacky
surface slows the ball down a little, so this also makes the red a little faster
than black. So you would chose the one that suits you better on the forehand.
This difference is believed to come from
the manufacturing process. The raw rubber used to make the rubber topsheets, is
naturally tacky and black. The dye needed to make the rubbers red, makes it lose
some of its tacky characteristics and softness. For some rubbers, the different
characteristics are quite obvious. For example the black 729 Geospin tacky is a
lot tackier than the same rubber in red. However for most Japanese or Euro made
rubbers, most of which are inherently non-tacky (but grippy), the differences
not really noticeable…
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