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[729 fx]

Was wondering about the grip - penhold. In the 70s & 80s, this type of grip is the dominant one in tt. Most Asian players were using penhold and everyone outside Asia (with some exceptions) played shakehand style. I noticed that in the current period, many top Asian players use shakehand style.

It seems like everywhere (even in my country) everyone ( especially shakehands supporters) is saying the penhold is dying out, only used by players older than 40 years of age (even with the RPB) -
I'm not sure if penhold is dying out but it seems to me that its popularity has decreased in traditionally penhold geographies.

In fact I am not really knowledgable of the state of ping pong affairs worldwide, so rather ignorant as to the actual state of affairs on which grips is the current young tt players prefer.
What DOES the future of penhold looks like? Don't know if it's because of where I live, but it is true that only the elderly people mostly uses penhold style.

For me there is no harm playing both styles. Each style has its pros & cons and if one can play both style, he/she will understand the mechanics of both style. BTW, playing penhold and shakehand is always better than just one style.

Not looking for a debate on which style is better but looking for some penhold solidarity here and to try to understand what the future of penhold grip.

[varghese]

I think the penhold style will never die. Occasionally we see a change in the trend in the Chinese regiment The Chinese do a lot of research into what is effective to dominate. Look at Blue Whale fromm Haifu. I could not even dream of Chinese making a rubber that costs $100. That rubber is helping Chinese players now. The penhold style popularity is disappearing is a similar case. I may be wrong too.

[dyt70]

penhole reduce cost for rubber

[varghese]

penhold reduce cost for rubber

Good point. Isn't the price of penhold blades are little expensive than shakehands?

[729 fx]

I believe the price of penhold (especially cpen) is on par with shakehand blades but the total cost (blade + rubbers) is cheaper if the penholder plays only on 1 side. For jpen blades, it may be slightly expensive as the demand of these type of blade is diminishing (the supply-demand rule play its part).

One may still get a cheaper penhold blade, especially from China brands like Galaxy (YinHe), Dawei, Double Fish & DHS (but I believe DHS is the more expensive of the lot). Other Asian brands like (from Japan) Yasaka, Kokutaku, Butterfly, TSP etc will be more expensive.

[varghese]

In our club there are like three Japanese Penhold blade players compared to some 60 total players here. Two of them are old enough so that they have started playing with JPen a long time ago. The other player is young and has been using for like 4 or 5 years old. I would say they are killers. The young player is a Junkie and he is in our forum. He has an excellent backhand reverse penhold hit (I think thats what it is called). One player among the other two has very crisp hit at the time of the ball rising. I dont know how accurately he does that. The third person has killer serves. I play against all these players. I would say they add beauty to the game. But I think it is hard to master a game with a Japanese penhold style than a regular Chinese Penhold.