Yasaka Shining Dragon

Durability is extremely long. After 120 hours of training the stickiness drops by half, next 90 hours he shot like a good European rubber.

A chinese topsheet with a japanese sponge. Well...interseting! Fisrt of all, the quality is top notch ; simply "a normal thing" considering the price : nearly 50 EUR! This Shining Dragon will suit perfectly any player in research of extrem rotation with high control. Serves, pushes, topspins are really spinny! No catapult effect, unlike ESN tensors (and unlike Rising Dragon), so you need to engage a few if you want some power. This reminds of chinese rubbers, but with the help of the japanese sponge no need to engage too much^^ And no need to use booster! This rubber is a beast at topspinning, whatever the distance to the table. However, like chinese rubbers, the control in short game and defensive strokes is excellent : YSD has many gears. Chops are awesome : quite easy and heavy backspin. Conclusion : not an ESN tensor, but a sort of hybrid betwin chinese and japanese rubbers. Very secure, very spinny with a medium-high throw angle and many gears. Personnaly, I use 2mm YSD on my forehand, as a modern defender ; I use to chop both sides and to attack with my forhand when needed. It fits my game perfectly!

Just bought a sheet of max thickness, red color for my backhand. It's for my backup racket which is a nittaku barwell fleet with a hurricane 8 hard fh rubber. My main racket is a zetro quad with hurricane pro 3 turbo orange (black) on fh and rising dragon (red) on bh. World of difference between the shining dragon and the rising dragon. The Shining dragon is maybe slightly tackier but loses its tackiness very quickly in gameplay after which it barely imparts any spin. Much slower compared to its predecessor though its on a faster blade. I'd choose the Rising Dragon any day over this. My personal opinion though I must admit I've played barely 3 hours with it over two sessions.

Both Black and Red rubbers are identical. SPONGE IS VERY VERY BRITTLE! USE ONLY SCISSORS OR SCALPEL BLADE FOR CUTTING SO DONT USE BOX-CUTTERS!!! This is traditional Chinese rubber from Yasaka. Very spinny, hard sponge and surprisingly very light compared to Chinese rubbers! Medium-throw makes blocks dead-easy. All loops and attacks can be loaded with spin. Serves, pushes, chops all very spinny. Flicks, punches, opening loop, loop-drives are very easy to execute. Smashing is the only weakness similar to other Chinese rubbers. Surprisingly very good to use for touch play. Overall, very very good product from Yasaka. Very good quality. Mostly for Chinese player looking to spend more for more reliable rubber purchases instead of the inconsistent rubber batches from the other manufacturers.

Yasaka has made a very interesting rubber , high elastic top sheet which have tacky surface but not hurricane tacky. Sponge is blue like dhs national sponge but yasaka shining Dragon sponge is lively like tensor but not super catapult. Rubber is suites both fh and bh. Comparable with xiom Vega pro or rakza 7 but with tacky top sheet. Amazing rubber much much better than Rakza x in every way also shining Dragon is a very durable including the sponge. No need for boosting its fast.