Browsing: DHS

It appears Cleveland Guardians designated hitter David Fry is going to be OK, though he’s going to need 6-8 weeks to recover after taking a foul-tipped 99 mph fastball to the face.

The pitcher who threw that fastball, Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, was visibly horrified after seeing where his pitch ended up during Tuesday’s game. Fry immediately fell to the ground and was bleeding before being carted off the field and taken to a hospital.

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As he revealed to reporters Wednesday, Skubal was concerned enough that he hitched a ride from Guardians manager Stephen Vogt to visit Fry in the hospital Tuesday night. A group of Guardians players also reportedly made the trip.

The Guardians released a statement Wednesday revealing that Fry sustained “multiple, minimally displaced, left-sided facial and nasal fractures” from the pitch. He has already been discharged from the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery with no surgery needed.

Skubal’s visit is a nice reminder that a tense and potentially historic division race doesn’t mean players can’t be human beings toward one another.

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Wednesday’s game was the opener of a three-game Tigers-Guardians series that could very well decide the AL Central. The Tigers were once as many as 15.5 games ahead of the Guardians in the division race and still led by 9.5 games as recently Sept. 10, but Cleveland has reeled off a stretch of 15 wins in 16 games while Detroit has lost 10 of its past 11 games.

The Guardians led the division by one game after Wednesday, with the head-to-head tiebreaker. If they finish the job and win the AL Central, it will be the largest comeback in the standings in MLB history.

Skubal has been far from a problem for Detroit during its free fall, as he is heavily favored to take home a second straight AL Cy Young Award. He currently leads the AL in ERA (2.21), FIP (2.46), WHIP (0.891) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (7.30) with 195 1/3 innings pitched across 31 starts.

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Released in 2001, the DHS Hurricane 3 National is, quite possibly, the best table tennis rubber of all time.Why so? Simply because itâ€s won more Olympic medals and important tournaments than any other rubber.

Hurricane 3 National is the weapon of choice of the Chinese National Team. Because of their success, many non-Chinese players have also picked up this rubber.

This rubber is extremely hard and sticky, and itâ€s supposedly one of the spinniest rubbers there is. It has many unique advantages and disadvantages, which weâ€ll discuss in this review.

We bought and boosted a sheet of the Hurricane 3 National, played with it for around 10 hours to see what itâ€s all about, and weâ€ll help you decide if it would be a good fit for your game.

DHS HURRICANE 3 NATIONAL REVIEW SUMMARY

The Hurricane 3 National features an extremely hard sponge and a tacky topsheet.
The strongest attribute of this rubber is its vast range of gears. Thanks to the spongeâ€s hardness and tackiness, itâ€s extremely easy to manage the speed of the game. Touching short is effortless and if you swing harder and harder you can produce extreme power.
However, we have mixed feelings about the Hurricane 3 National. Throughout our testing, we didnâ€t feel like paying the almost $100 price tag and going through the hassle of boosting it was worthwhile.

Perfect for: Intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced offensive players on their forehand side, advanced players on their backhand side. 3-10+ years of playing.

Benefits

Has all the gears.

Probably the best offensive rubber for playing out the short game.

Superb at overpowering incoming speed and spin.

Great spin when brushing the ball.

Drawbacks

Very hard to use.

Need a high swing speed to attack powerfully.Â

Most other rubbers will produce higher-quality shots at the amateur level.

About the Reviewer

Alvaro brings 7+ years of playing experience. He’s tested 20+ rubbers for Racket Insight and his style is The Controller.

About the Review

Blade Used: Stratus Power Wood
Rubber Thickness: 2.15mm
Hours Tested: 10+

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Recommended Playstyles

We recommend the Hurricane 3 National to intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced offensive players who play a Chinese-style powerlooping game.

Design of the DHS Hurricane 3 National

The DHS Hurricane 3 National comes in specially designed white packaging, marking it apart from other rubbers in the Hurricane range.

Inside, we can find the rubber. We ordered a red sheet, of 2.2mm thickness, in 40-degree hardness.

The topsheet of the rubber, as expected, is extremely tacky. It is definitely tackier than the regular Hurricane 3 NEO weâ€ve also reviewed.

Hereâ€s a short clip showing just how tacky this Hurricane 3 National really is:

The sponge itself is extremely, extremely hard. We used our durometer to test its hardness, and its adjusted reading was 59° on the ESN scale (after boosting it!). This is comfortably the hardest rubber weâ€ve ever reviewed.

Speaking of boosting, for this review we treated the rubber with two layers of Falco Tempo Long.

If you donâ€t know what weâ€re talking about, hereâ€s our full guide on how to boost a table tennis rubber.

In short, boosting is a process in which a chemical product, called booster, is used to soften the sponge and give it more tension. This process is supposed to give the rubber a better feeling, more speed, and more spin.

We applied a light layer of Falco Tempo Long and waited for 24 hours. The rubber domed slightly:

Afterwards, we applied a second layer of booster and let the rubber sit for another 24 hours. This was the result:

As you can see, the rubber was so domed that it was impossible to glue in that state.

So, I waited for around 5 days for the rubber to flatten before gluing it onto my racket. Itâ€s very important that you wait this time so that the rubber stays on the blade after you glue it.

Before continuing our review, I must stress that boosting these rubbers is, in my opinion, mandatory if you intend to use them for offensive play.

There will be people whoâ€ll say you can play with these rubbers unboosted.

But then, whatâ€s the point? If you want to use this rubber to attack, and youâ€re paying $100 to use an extremely hard and slow rubber, you would have been better off spending that money elsewhere.

As for which booster to use, most people recommend using Haifuâ€s booster, and others recommend using Kailin. Ma Lin and other Chinese players boost their rubbers with Haifu, so if youâ€re going to purchase a booster for your Hurricane 3 National Iâ€d recommend Haifu.

We used Falco because thatâ€s what we had at the time, and it did the job.

The Pong Professor published a video some time back testing the effects of different boosters on the Hurricane 3. Iâ€ll link it below for you to take a look if youâ€re interested.

The effect of the Falco booster is supposed to last anywhere between 1 and 2 months. After that, the rubber would lose its added speed and youâ€d have to boost it again (most likely with reduced effect) or change it for a new sheet and start all over again.

Itâ€s important you understand boosting so that you know what youâ€re getting into if you buy this rubber. You canâ€t play with it out of the package, you have to go through a whole multistage procedure to soften it up and give it more speed which takes around a week.

After all the effort, these effects will last for two months before needing to do it all over again.

I donâ€t know about you, but, when I buy a new rubber, I want to glue it ASAP and head to the club. Needing to wait 1 week to play with it is quite a hassle if you ask me.

But, all of this is warranted if the playing characteristics are excellent, right? Letâ€s talk about that then.

Playtesting the DHS Hurricane 3 National

We tried the DHS Hurricane 3 National with our usual testing blade: the Donic Original Carbospeed.

The combination wasnâ€t the best, as the Donic blade is very hard and stiff, and the 40° Hurricane we got is also extremely hard at 59 degrees ESN.

In the end, the whole combination ended up being very hard to use and quite hard to get the characteristic spin out of the Hurricane.

This wasnâ€t due to a lack of grip, far from it, as this rubber excels at spinning the ball, but rather, from a lack of flexiness and softness from the whole setup.

If we were to do this all over again, Iâ€d get a softer Hurricane, the 38-degree version, or the 39-degree version at most, and pair it with a softer and more flexible blade, like a Viscaria or a 7-ply all-wood blade, like a Clipper.

I highly recommend going for the 38 or 39 variants rather than the 40-degree one.

In terms of speed, the base speed of this setup (believe it or not) was extremely slow, even with an OFF+ blade and two layers of booster.

It was really hard to put speed on the ball. I had to swing with excessive force to get speed out of the rubber. If I didnâ€t, Iâ€d fail to produce any kind of successful attack.

Driving and Looping

This rubber was, without a doubt, made for looping. Looping with this rubber has a unique set of advantages and disadvantages but Iâ€ll come to that soon. Letâ€s start with driving and flat-hitting.

I honestly found driving and flat-hitting the ball with this rubber well below par, considering this is an offensive rubber.

The reason is due to its stickiness and slow base speed. Even though we get a relatively good sense of control, the ball sticks to the rubber for way too long, and itâ€s very hard to get high speeds with flat hits.

European rubbers with grippy topsheets and bouncy sponges are miles, miles ahead of Chinese rubbers when it comes to driving and flat-hitting the ball. They simply shoot the ball in a faster and more direct way.

This is why Chinese players twiddle their rackets when smashing, the bouncier rubbers on their backhand side are much better for these strokes.

In terms of loops, the Hurricane National produces shots with a medium-low to low arc, which I didnâ€t like. Some people argue that the Hurricaneâ€s low throw is an advantage because your shots are harder to block or counterloop.

I believe that, at an amateur level, the safety you get above the net is much more important than the benefit we just mentioned.

This rubber has an extremely unforgiving throw: itâ€s low so you donâ€t get much clearance over the net but itâ€s also long, the ball doesnâ€t dip as violently as with Euro or hybrid rubbers unless you brush the ball perfectly.

Itâ€s said that Chinese rubbers are hard to use because itâ€s hard to clear the net but itâ€s also hard not to overshoot the table. This holds true with the National Hurricane. If you mishit the ball, both scenarios can happen.

In terms of looping, other than its throw, you can get good speed and spin out of the Hurricane, but you can get power much easier with other rubbers to be honest.

The speed and spin we got when powerlooping was adequate but the quality we got on regular loops was below par. ESN rubbers and hybrid rubbers are much better in this respect.

Hereâ€s a video showing the shot quality you get when looping with the National Hurricane 3:

In terms of open-ups, the Hurricane 3 was quite enjoyable. If you swing upwards, you can get tons of spin on the ball. If you also hit forwards, you can easily hit winners against backspin.

The Hurricane is great at overpowering incoming spin. This is one of the strengths of tacky rubbers, they stick onto the ball and change the spin more easily than grippy rubbers. This makes it possible to “ignore†incoming spin to some extent.

This effect comes in very handy when counterlooping. Counterlooping close to the table was quite difficult because of its throw, but not because of the incoming spin.

Iâ€m sure that with a flexier, higher-throwing blade the Hurricane would be a great counterlooping rubber. On the Carbospeed however, the throw was a bit too unforgiving.

Counterlooping away from the table yields great results if you swing fast. You have more time to set up a big attack, and therefore, to accelerate onto the ball.

You probably wonâ€t pass anyone on speed alone but you can load the ball with incredible amounts of spin.

Serve and Receive

The DHS Hurricane 3 National is probably the best offensive rubber to serve and receive with, period.

In terms of serves, it produces tons of spin, is very easy to keep the ball low to the net, and itâ€s also extremely easy to control the ball. I was able to place the ball anywhere I wanted on serving.

In terms of serve receive, this rubber is the best high-performance rubber there is when it comes to the passive receive.

Touching short is effortless and you can push the ball shorter and lower than with any other rubber. You just have a lot more control and time with the ball.

Because the sponge has very little bounce and the topsheet is sticky you can control the ball superbly. Itâ€s a benefit that also holds true when it comes to pushing long.

This is one of the biggest strengths of Chinese rubbers: they support the Chinese 3rd ball attack style by being exceptional for serving, and they make it easy to touch short and set up opportunities for your own attack this way.

In terms of the active serve receive (flicks) we didnâ€t really enjoy using the Hurricane. We much prefer flicking with bouncier and higher-throwing rubbers, but if youâ€re going to use it on the forehand side it doesnâ€t make much of a difference as the forehand flick isnâ€t played that often.

Blocking and Chopping

Blocking with the Hurricane 3 National is like a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, its slow speed makes it easy to control incoming speed.

On the other hand, the Hurricane is so slow that if you perform passive blocks with this rubber, youâ€re going to hand your opponent an extremely easy ball.

Blocking with this rubber is just not viable past a certain level. You do have good control but neither passive nor active blocks are effective at giving you a chance to win the point.

In terms of chopping, this is a superb rubber. Many defenders play with the Hurricane 3 and itâ€s easy to see why: you get great control over the ball, you can put tons of spin onto it and itâ€s not hard to control the height of each chop.

Hurricane 3 National Alternatives To Consider

Overall Reflections on The DHS Hurricane 3 National

The Hurricane 3 National is the perfect offensive rubber for some players under the right circumstances, if and only if certain criteria are met:

1. The player must have a very high swing speed (and good athleticism, if possible).
2. The player should choose exactly the correct hardness (we recommend 38 or 39 degrees).
3. The player should boost the rubber (we recommend 2 layers of Haifu booster).
4. The player should pair the rubber with a suitable blade, like a Viscaria or a Hurricane Long V.
5. And, the player should play with a traditionally ‘Chinese†style technique.

Under any other circumstances, Iâ€d recommend other rubbers. Simply because you can grab any offensive blade, slap on some European offensive rubbers, and you will have a good enough racket for offensive play.

More importantly, youâ€ll have a much safer, easier to use and more confidence-inducing racket.

However, for the right player, the Hurricane 3 is a beast in the short game, superb for power looping, counterlooping, and allows you to deliver unbeatable serves.

In my experience, my swing speed wasnâ€t nearly enough to reap the offensive benefits of the Hurricane, and Iâ€d very much prefer using safer and bouncier rubbers.

Alvaroâ€s a qualified ITTF Level 1 Coach who’s been playing Table Tennis since he was 15 and is now ranked within the top 50 in his native Argentina. He loves to compete in provincial tournaments and is always looking for ways to improve. Alvaro made his favorite memories with a racket in hand, and he joined the RacketInsight team to share his passion with other players!

Blade: Butterfly Fan Zhendong ALC | Forehand: Butterfly Dignics 09c | Backhand: Butterfly Tenergy 19
Playstyle: The Controller

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DHS is one of the worldâ€s biggest rubber manufacturers in the world (the biggest in China), producing millions of table tennis products every year.

When we think of rubbers made by DHS, we usually think of Chinese-style rubbers i.e. very hard, sticky, non-bouncy but powerful rubbers, such as the Hurricane 3 NEO.

However, DHS struck a deal with German factory ESN and delved into the world of European-style rubbers. The result was the DHS Gold Arc 8.

We have tested the DHS Gold Arc 8 for 10+ hours to see whether their innovative European rubber was worth the effort, and if it would be right for your game.

DHS Gold Arc 8 REVIEW SUMMARY

The DHS Gold Arc 8 is a medium-hard offensive table tennis rubber. In my opinion, this rubbers†greatest strengths are its superb balance and its feeling.

It has the ideal balance between speed and control for developing offensive players. This rubber is powerful and controllable in the same proportion, and it is also very spinny.

In addition, it is not very bouncy, so it is a great rubber when it comes to playing difficult shots, such as receiving spinny serves short or counterlooping.

This is a superb offering for offensive players of all levels, provided that you pair it with an OFF-, OFF, or OFF+ blade depending on your level and playing style. The shot quality that can be achieved with the Gold Arc is good enough even for advanced offensive play.Â

And, if youâ€re an all-round or even a defensive player, youâ€ll be able to benefit from its control, feeling, spin, and offensive capabilities of this rubber.

From 10 hours of testing, we had no issues with durability and the rubber was as fresh at the end as it was at the start. This is backed up by reviews from other players who rate it as a highly durable rubber.

Perfect for:Offensive players of all levels on either side. 1-15+ years of playing.

Benefits

Great balance of speed, spin, and control.

Very confidence-inducing.

Consistent and stable.

Great for looping and counterlooping.

Superb touch.

Outstanding for blocking.

Linear power delivery.

Ideal arc for looping and counterlooping.

Not too spin-sensitive.

Drawbacks

Not as fast or spinny as top-of-the-line tensor rubbers.Â

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Recommended Playstyles

We recommend the Gold Arc 8 to players who want a superbly balanced and very capable offensive rubber.

Design of The DHS Gold Arc 8

The DHS Gold Arc 8 comes in a high-quality sealed package:

Inside, we can find the rubber, covered by a protective film.

The rubber we ordered is a black, MAX thickness 47.5° Gold Arc 8. Our initial impressions are that itâ€s very grippy and slightly tacky.

This is the “catch†with the Gold Arc 8: Itâ€s a European rubber!

Itâ€s not just that this rubber is a European-style rubber, itâ€s just that itâ€s 100% European, made in Germany by ESN.

Hence, it is almost not sticky at all, and very grippy.

Upon pressing on the topsheet, we find that the DHS Gold Arc 8 is a medium-hard rubber.

It is available in 2 different hardness options: 47,5° and 50°. As the 47.5° variant is the most popular, we decided to purchase it for this review.

We feel like the 47.5° option is justified in being the most popular, as we think itâ€s the perfect hardness for its characteristics. We would even have preferred a 45° option for the backhand side over the 50° one.

Our durometer reads the Gold Arc at 46° hardness, and it almost always reads the hardness of our rubbers a few degrees softer, so it is probably 47.5° as DHS says.

When cut to our Donic Original Carbospeed, the Gold Arc 8 weighs 51 grams, just a bit heavier than usual.

Playtesting the DHS Gold Arc 8

The 47.5-degree hardness and its characteristics make this rubber an excellent fit for both the forehand and backhand sides.

The DHS Gold Arc 8 is very controllable for an offensive rubber. Itâ€s not as fast or spinny as top-of-the-line offensive rubbers, but it is no slouch either.

There are levels to offensive rubbers.

If I had to picture offensive table tennis rubbers in terms of potential shot quality, Iâ€d say that the Gold Arc 8 is below rubbers like the Dignics 05, Tibhar Evolution MX-P, any of the Tenergies, or the Hammond Z2.

And, itâ€s markedly above rubbers like the Rakza 7, Rasanter R42, or the Xiom Vega X.

Hence, the Gold Arc 8 strikes a very interesting balance between speed, spin, and control.

It is a step above rubbers that are recommended just for developing offensive players, but it is a step below top-of-the-line offensive rubbers.

It grants players the capability of producing lots of speed and spin, without sacrificing too much feeling, dwell time, and control.

In terms of what blade to pair it with, it would work superbly on a huge variety of blades. In fact, I think you can pair it with every type of blade there is!

We tested the Gold Arc 8 on a Donic Original Carbospeed, a very fast OFF+ blade.

We liked how it behaved on this blade. This combination had lots of speed, spin, and sufficient control. It meshed together with the blade quite well, as it took the speed of the blade and gave it more control.

In addition, if you were to pair it with slower and flexier offensive blades, youâ€d have sufficient speed and even more spin, feeling, and control.

And, on allround and defensive blades, this rubber could produce high-quality loops and chops.

If youâ€re a beginning offensive player, Iâ€d recommend pairing the Gold Arc on either an ALL+ or an OFF- blade. Intermediate-level and advanced offensive players can pair it with OFF and even OFF+ blades to get more speed.

Driving and Looping

The DHS Gold Arc 8 is a great rubber for driving, looping, and counterlooping.

It feels very stable when driving the ball and you get a good sense of control. In addition, the ball travels relatively fast.

Flat hits also work quite well with this rubber, as with any medium-hard European rubber. It is a good rubber to flat-hit and smash with as it is hard enough and relatively fast but not overly bouncy to the point that you lose out on control.

As for looping, the Gold Arc 8 is a very good rubber. It is quite spinny, the feeling upon contact is superb and you get good dwell time with the ball.

Its speed is also high, especially when paired with fast offensive blades.

As you can see in this clip, you can generate good levels of speed and spin with it:

We tested this rubber alongside the Nittaku Hammond Z2, and the main difference we noticed between them was that the Gold Arc felt slightly softer, it had a bit less speed but noticeably less spin.

In addition, there was a noticeable difference in dwell time. Shots played with the Hammond Z2 shot off more violently, while shots played with the Gold Arc stayed in the racket for more time.

The other difference we noticed is that shots played with the Hammond dipped violently on the other side of the table because of the amount of spin it was able to generate.

With this rubber, you can generate good levels of spin, but itâ€s hard to generate as much spin as with rubbers that have extreme grip. The Gold Arc doesnâ€t have the grippiest topsheet, so it simply canâ€t generate as much spin as other rubbers.

To further prove our point, we tried opening up against backspin with both rubbers, and this was the result:

As you can see, my opponent struggled to block my loops with the Hammond, but not so much with the Gold Arc.

The Gold Arc does generate good amounts of spin on open-ups, and any shot for that matter, but itâ€s very hard to generate the extremely spinny shots that a top-of-the-line rubber can.

However, we did find it much easier to land shots on the table when we looped with this rubber, so itâ€s a great rubber for players who want to up their consistency when playing topspin attacks.

The lesser amount of speed and spin can sometimes be beneficial. When it comes to counterlooping, the Gold Arc 8 is an excellent rubber because of this reason.

It has more than enough speed and spin to produce high-quality counterloops, but it isnâ€t affected by spin as much as the grippiest rubbers, and you get a lot more dwell time with the ball.

Paired with the Donic Original Carbospeed, counterloops felt deadly and controllable at the same time.

As for playing away from the table, this rubberâ€s performance will vary greatly depending on what blade you pair it with.

It behaved amazingly with our OFF+ blade, but you may find it a tad too slow if you pair it with slower blades, as itâ€s not the fastest rubber out there.

Serve and Receive

The DHS Gold Arc 8 is an excellent rubber for serving and receiving.

As for serving, it is quite good because you get good dwell time with the ball. It was easy to control the ball, place it wherever I wanted, and I really liked its feel when serving.

However, it doesnâ€t have as much grip as top-of-the-line rubbers, so it wonâ€t generate as much spin as them.

In terms of receiving serves, the Gold Arc 8 is even better.

Itâ€s quite easy to touch short, push long, push half-long, you name it. Because itâ€s relatively hard and not that bouncy, the touch game feels superb. It behaves very predictably when receiving.

It is quite a bit easier to play out the short game with the Gold Arc 8 than with other rubbers such as the Tenergy 05, and this is an advantage that shouldnâ€t be underestimated if you donâ€t feel that confident in your serve-receive abilities.

Blocking and Chopping

Blocking with the DHS Gold Arc 8 is simply superb.

It has the perfect speed, hardness, throw angle, and feeling for blocking. Itâ€s very easy to control the ball when passive blocking and you can also produce dangerous active blocks quite safely. See for yourselves:

Chopping with this rubber was what we expected: Good control, good spin, not the best on this blade.

However, I think it could be a very interesting rubber for modern defensive players on slower blades.

Alternatives to The Gold Arc 8

Overall Reflections on The DHS Gold Arc 8

We really liked the Gold Arc 8 and we think itâ€s a very versatile offensive rubber.

It could work on a wide variety of blades to suit the needs of players with completely different playing styles.

This is because this rubber is quite controllable and very offensively capable but not that bouncy.

On a blade like a Viscaria, it would make an excellent offensive setup for intermediate and upper-intermediate offensive players.

I think that the Gold Arc is a great alternative for these situations. If youâ€re a developing offensive player and you want a rubber that you canâ€t go wrong with, look no further!

In my opinion, most intermediate-level players should go for rubbers like this one instead of jumping onto top-of-the-line rubbers too prematurely, especially if they use a fast offensive blade.

Alvaroâ€s a qualified ITTF Level 1 Coach who’s been playing Table Tennis since he was 15 and is now ranked within the top 50 in his native Argentina. He loves to compete in provincial tournaments and is always looking for ways to improve. Alvaro made his favorite memories with a racket in hand, and he joined the RacketInsight team to share his passion with other players!

Blade: Butterfly Fan Zhendong ALC | Forehand: Butterfly Dignics 09c | Backhand: Butterfly Tenergy 19
Playstyle: The Controller

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