Red and Black

I read somewhere that before the game players are allowed to examine their opponent bats. If a bat does not have the same rubber the player would know the difference and since black and red are pretty different colors he would clearly see what side of the bat the opponent uses and would have fare chances to predict the behavior of the ball.

Pavel.

I heard the opposite.  That red rubber had more pace and black had more spin.  Something about the different dying process.  That's why I always use black for forehand and red for backhand.  So it turns out to be an urban myth!

Black was once better for the Chinese rubbers, I'm not sure nowadays. Red was once better for the Japanese rubbers, but they are the same now. The whole issue was about the coloring substance.

The reason for the rule about having to use one red and one black rubber was brought in to lessen the effect of using anti-spin. If a player could use two rubbers that were both the same color and one was anti-spin and the other a normal rubber, it became very hard for an opponent to know what type of spin was on the ball.

A long time ago, all of the Japanese rubbers were red. When the rule came in that you needed a black and red rubber, there was initially a few problems with the black Japanese rubbers. However they quickly fixed that and now the black and red are the same for the Japanese rubbers. However it seems that most players using these rubbers still put red on their forehands!

In fact there was so much uncertainty about the black rubbers that Yasaka brought out a rubber specifically to try and improve the image of black rubbers. It was called Yasaka Black Power!