Friendship/729 Dr. Evil

It’s a very friendly rubber for guys that make the transition between regular rubber to a hard bat. It’s possible to generate some spin and have very good control.

I got just about what I expected from a pips-out OX antispin rubber. Slow and controllable with a very low throw and very little spin. I glued a pair of these to an old Stiga 5-ply blade, which was a bit of a hassle, but after applying a thin layer of glue to both the blade and the rubbers and leaving them pressed together under a pile of books with the glue still somewhat wet, the end result was satisfactory. Not a bad product at all, just a very specialized one. Excellent customer service from Tabletennis11!

Wonderful control, surprising amount of spin when needed. Excellent for hitting through spin.

Hard to know how to rate this. If I was rating it as a short pip for regular play, it would be poorly rated. But I think it is approved in the US for hardbat play, and it is certainly good for that.

My nephews are able to attack and block the shots with a hard bat on the backhand.

These rubbers neutralize any spin. Good rubbers for the hard bat purpose.

I don’t like this rubber, bad quality and game characteristics.

Very versatile rubber. Used 0.5mm sponge on backhand. I like the chop feeling. Dr Evil is simply the easiest short pip to play with.

Short pips without sponge. The rubber resembles a soft linoleum, but stretches, is quite slow, interesting to play on soft surfaces in defense, but it can also be well smashed when possible.

I have been playing with short pips on my backhand for many years. My playing style is close to the table, hitting game, and short pips give me the control needed to both hit and throw in a bit of deception when warranted. I bought my first sheet of Dr. Evil as a joke. Many of the players at my club were using anti-spin or long pips to up their game on the deception side, and I was using boring old short pips. When I saw the rubber was named Dr. Evil and was not very expensive, I thought I’d throw it on my old blade and pick on the anti-spin and long pip players a bit.

One interesting thing about Dr. Evil is that it has no sponge. When the rubber arrived and I put it on my blade, I quickly realized this rubber was quite different from other short pips I had used. First of all, I normally use a fairly thick glue. With Dr. Evil, this caused lines in the rubber from where I’d applied it. After a re-do with a thinner glue, I was good to go.

At the time, my back up blade was a Xiom Strato with Gewo Nanoflex Ft48 2.1 on the forehand. With the Dr. Evil on my backhand, I found that I could hit the ball quite hard, with good consistency and control. I seemed to have better control than my earlier short pip rubbers that had sponge, and as a bonus, I found that Dr. Evil was very evil when blocking the ball. I was able to return the ball with either no spin or side spin with ease. Blocking strong loops sends the ball back like a knuckleball in baseball. Counter loop that!

What I have lost with the switch to Dr. Evil is my ability to spin the racket during gameplay. With a fast, spinny inverted rubber on the forehand, Dr. Evil is just too different to spin the racket - it messes up my shot more than it impacts the other players if I manage to get it over the net. I consider this a fair trade given the higher level of control, flat hitting, and deception I have gained.

I am a big fan of this rubber.