Friendship/729 Cross Blue Sponge

This is a slow and spinny rubber. I use this primarily as a training rubber because it's super cheap. You can find this rubber online for about $6 to $7 per sheet. I use 46 degrees hardness on both FH and BH. I've been training with 729 Cross for the past few months. Here's what I think of this rubber. The surface is quite tacky and can generate a good amount of spin on serves and with small motions. The main problem with this rubber is its low speed when it comes to driving and looping. There's no catapult effect whatsoever. I put the rubber on Carbonado 45 and 90 and shots still feel slow. And I'm talking about full swing drives and loop drives with weight transfer and waist movement, even then the balls still don't feel as fast as they should be. But with the slow speed, you gain excellent control. This is probably one of the best control rubbers I've played with. I would highly recommend this rubber for new players wanting to try out tacky Chinese rubbers. For players of decent skill level, I would recommend faster tacky rubbers like Hurricane 3, Skyline 3, and Battle II.

Needs several layers of booster to come alive. Still might have small speed problems. The advantage compared to other 729 rubbers is the light weight, price and the blue sponge which responds very well to boosters. Time will tell if its slower speed compared to Battle2 will make it unplayable in competitions. Below fenghun and B2 perhaps, but probably overall nicer than harder heavier 729 rubbers. The blue sponge is interesting in many ways. Haifu seamoon is perhaps more suitable to blue sponge than Falco Long Term. Remains to be seen in 19/20 season.

i used this for 3 months it was pretty ok for forehand

Absolutely need to be boosted. Put baby oil three times for 3 days and U'll get more speed. Put 3 layers of olive oil on the top sheet and becomes like Yinhe Jupiter II with more control. Good rubber!

Only Black rubber with Bue Sponge.