Medium pimples: the lost hybrid

Between the short pimples of 6.2 and the long ones of 6.3 lies a band the industry has explored without the market ever quite adopting it. Medium pimples — rubber cylinders whose height approaches their diameter, around the 0.9 ratio the rules use to separate short pimples from long ones — combine features of both families without belonging fully to either. They are the hybrid that never caught on.

The design logic is understandable. A pimple of intermediate height is more flexible than a short pimple but less so than a long one. Under impact it bends partially: it neither stays rigid like the short ones nor yields with the amplitude of the long ones. The incoming spin is not transmitted cleanly as on an inverted rubber, but neither is it reversed with the force of long pimples. The result is a marked attenuation of the opponent's spin with a weak or inconsistent reversal, depending on the power and rotation of the incoming stroke.

In theory, that intermediate zone offers versatility: some capacity to generate spin of one's own — more than non-frictional long pimples — some insensitivity to the opponent's spin — more than an inverted rubber — and a certain capacity for reversal — less than long pimples, but present. In practice, the combination proves hard to exploit. The player who needs spin reversal as a tactical weapon prefers long pimples, where the reversal is reliable and pronounced. The one looking for flat hitting and insensitivity to spin chooses short pimples, whose behaviour is more predictable. The medium pimple is left on ground where none of its virtues is expressed intensely enough to build a clear playing style around it.

That lack of definition has limited its presence on the competitive circuit. Defensive players opt for long pimples; blockers and counter-attackers, for short ones. Few high-level players have based their game on medium pimples, which reduces the visibility of the product and feeds back into its marginality: fewer users mean less development by manufacturers, fewer models in the catalogue and less accumulated experience in the community.

The current catalogue reflects that situation. While short and long pimples have dozens of models from multiple manufacturers, medium pimples come down to a handful of options, often discontinued or relegated to secondary lines. Some models sold as “medium pimples” are, strictly speaking, tall short pimples or short long pimples that the manufacturer labels in the intermediate zone for commercial rather than mechanical reasons. The boundary between categories is not as well defined as the labels suggest.

Does it make sense to consider medium pimples? For a very specific player, yes: someone wanting rather more disturbance of the opponent's spin than short pimples offer, without reaching the full reversal of the long ones, and prepared to invest time in mastering a material with fewer references available. It is a narrow niche. Section 6.6 places it on the map of player profiles. What this section aims to make clear is that medium pimples did not disappear for being bad; they disappeared because the two extremes flanking them fulfil their function more sharply, and in table tennis — as in the choice of equipment generally — the tool that does one thing well tends to prevail over the one that does two things by halves.