Congratulations to Daniel Stepanyuk on his fine Championship Performance!

Daniel uses the Nittaku Mima Ito Carbon Blade, Tibhar Hybrid K3 Rubber (FH) and DONIC Bluestorm Pro Am Rubber (BH). Here are Daniel’s thought on each:

Nittaku Mima Ito Carbon Blade – I have played and tried this blade many times, the biggest thing that I noticed and was surprised about is the high control in literally any situation, the rubbers I would recommend for this blade would be any tensor rubbers because it would definitely feel slow if you would put something tacky on this blade. The Mima Ito Carbon blade has unique vibrations, but they are very minimal and not annoying at all. If you are an attacker that likes to play full control with speed then the Mima Ito might just be for you.

Tibhar Hybrid K3 Rubber – The K3 rubber produced by Tibhar is an absolute beast of a rubber. I have also been playing with this rubber for a few months and I don’t plan on switching.

As I started to play with this rubber I noticed right away that this rubber was meant for my forehand, luckily for me that was exactly the purpose that I got the rubber. Its speed was noticeably quicker than the Butterfly Dignics 09c or any very tacky rubbers. Even though the sponge is hard you can still feel much more spin than other tacky rubbers. It has outstanding performance in areas such as loops any distance to the table, counterloops, smashes and any quick play.

What was fascinating was that the rubber had much more gears than I thought, because as I started to play with it I noticed the speed mostly, but when it got to touch game and pushes and flicks it was surprisingly very very easy to control around the net. This is exactly the reason why I feel that this is the right rubber for modern day game because it has pretty much every characteristic that a player would need from a rubber. If you would like a rubber that fast and very spinny , but also relatively easy to control then I would highly suggest to give the Hybrid K3 a shot.

Donic Bluestorm Pro Am Rubber – The Donic Pro am rubber is suitable for all sorts of styles, I have been playing with this rubber for a little while now on my backhand and I can tell you that it has surpassed my thoughts on its capabilities. First, this rubber is very unique because of the sponge. I noticed that every time you hit the ball with this rubber you can feel the spin and the ball holding on to your rubber for a longer period of time even though it is not as sticky as like a Butterfly Dignics 09c or DHS Hurricane. I prefer it on my backhand because I like to play close to the table and playing quickly, but many times I have noticed even off the table I can just go for shots with full confidence in my strokes plus I can feel the ball much better than I have been able to with other tensor rubbers. It has great feeling with pushes, flicks, and openings, of course, I like it for counters off heavy topspin, but it is still sometimes difficult because the rubber is pretty fast and very spinny, I would recommend this rubber to people who really love to spin on their strokes and mainly focus on spin with their game. Overall it is an outstanding product and I would pretty much recommend it to anyone looking to take their game to the next level.

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