DHS Hurricane 2 (NEO) - factory tuned! (legal)

Very impressed with H2Neo. For past 5 years, I’ve been a H3 player but find them hard and painful when new. Seen that others re-glue them to soften them up. I found letting them age 3 months worked ok for me. But that’s history now.

In winter’10, for something different, I tried H2 Olde on a slow blade. This worked well for me. Whilst I lost side spin on hook shots and loop, my drives improved, chop was reliable and smash worked. My game improved overall.

This season, I tried Tuple 007 / F1 on a slowish blade and found the Tuple was a good control rubber with better side spin than H2. But F1 was a pain to control and cost me errors. After a few weeks, I gave up and went to H2Neo on a Yin He T2 carbon blade. I’ve used this blade before with H3 rubbers to good effect – tossing the hook shot up with a high arc off both FH & BH.

Last night was my first foray into comp with the H2Neo rubbers and it worked well despite too many overhits. Hopefully the overhits mellow as I adapt to the rubber but initial comments are:
- Definitely a lo-arc hook shot with great sidespin. Lowest I’ve ever hooked.
- Loop is good but good players were able to hit it.
- Chop was good but not as controlled as H2 Olde on slow blade.
- Drives were at risk of overhit – might need to use more blocks.
- Smash – untried due to lack of opportunity – but I think it will be ok.

Interestingly, after the comp, I tried a mate’s Tenergy 05 / Andro Impuls speed setup.

The Impulse Speed was lo-arc and played very much like H2 Neo. There was little adaption from H2 Neo to Impulse speed.

This was my first hit with Tenergy rubber and wasn’t shock or awed by it. I would say the H2 Neo was giving as much or better side spin. I was putting a lot of Tenergy hooks into the net as its not lo-arc. It wasn’t till third game I started tossing the Tenergy up higher at slower speed and letting it drop, bounce and spin. Then it started to feel good – but I used to do this with H3 on T2 blade, so nothing new.

I will try to do some hi-arc hook shots with H2Neo further back from the table and see how they go. I tend to fall into the trap of hitting hard up close to the table where my own side spin and top spin cause me errors. Probably why H2olde worked well for me coz there was less sidespin to haunt me. Must remember – hook or loop and back away for hi-arc topspin rally.

Davown2000@yahoo.com