I will take the bait. I returned to table tennis about 5 years ago after playing
fairly seriously as a teenager. I started back with hardbat and enjoyed learning
a defensive chopping game with an occasional attack. About 2 years ago I
switched to sponge b/c I found that playing sponge players with a hardbat does
not leave you with many options. If they attacked, I fell back and chopped. To
be sure, it was often a lot of fun, but at some point it became less fun
winning by waiting for opponents to miss. I realize this may be a very limited
way to look at it, but that's how I felt. I also feel that hardbat against
sponge is just not that interesting in terms of strategy.

Another reason I switched is that it's not that helpful for my TT friends to
practice with me. Most are at a lower level and need to work on
counter-driving, looping and blocking, and so on and I feel like I fit in
better as a practice partner/mentor playing with sponge. The same goes for
helping some kids, which I do on a casual basis at our rec center.

Having said all this, however, I generally play with pips out on my sponge
(having had lots of problems as a 50 year old picking up the inverted looping
game) so maybe I haven't gone all the way over to the dark side. And I still do
pull out my Hock on occasion for fun. If there was a hardbat community around
here, I would still play, but since there isn't, I go with the squishies.

Best to all,
Dan Sisken

Quoting Francis LEIBENGUTH <francisdef54@...>:

>
> We often hear or read about players who decided one day to turn to
> permanent hardbat play (I'm one of them), generally explaining that they
> where fed up with sponge, have better sensations with hardbat, etc...
> But I just found a link
> (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/samsteiner/2006Tourn.htm
> <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/samsteiner/2006Tourn.htm> )
> where I learnt that John Tannehill turned back to sponge apparently last
> year.
> So here's my question : maybe there are other members of this group that
> make the same decision (to turn or turn back to sponge), so can you
> explain why to us ? And if John Tannehill reads this forum, can he give
> us his answer ? Thanks in advance.
>
>