We believe it makes Table Tennis less pleasant to play and watch. The Game was made even spinnier when the thin pimpled outer sheet was inverted making a smooth flat surface. Dick Miles, Bob Gusikoff, Sol Schiff, Marty Reisman, Lazlo Bellac-lament where the game went with this degenerative change in the racket's covering. The racket covering manufacturing giants see no financial payoff in validating Classic Hardbat Table Tennis. To help the manufacturers and vendors make quick cash, no cigarette type warnings of the dangers of regluing are put in USA Table Tennis Magazine's glue ads.
National coaches have no strictures to follow for regluing at our table tennis clubs.
The difference between the modern sponge and the Hardbat game is in the construction of the racket. The Hardbat racket has to be made of 100 percent wood. On the other hand, the modern sponge game, has fewer strictures on construction, i.e., the racket can be an alloy of metal and wood, playing surfaces can be different on each side, and speed glues and solvents can be applied before each playing session to make the rubber more grippy and expensive. In the early 1990's players discovered that if they reglued their rackets with certain glues or solvents that the rubber on their rackets could be revitalized before each playing session. The regluing also reduced the rubber's life span, which was a boon for the manufactures and their dealers.