Choose the Right Handle for Your Style

How many handle types exist in table tennis? And what are the best type and the advantages of each type? Here is my answer.

The handle is very important in table tennis. It’s the place that you can apply pressure and play the “micro-adjustment”. Choosing the wrong types, or too small handle will ruin your development. Before buying any table tennis blade that suits your style, you should decide to select the best handle type.

New players often don’t know to choose which type of handle for their new blade. They often wonder

• “What is the difference between a straight and a flared handle for a table tennis paddle?”
• Or “How to choose the blade handle Type?”

Read more: Top 10 professional blade right now.

6 types of handles in table tennis

After deciding your grip, now you must choose the best table tennis blade handle that suits your playing style. Based on Palatinus (table tennis maker expert), there are 6 types of handles grips: Flared handle, Straight handle, Cpen handle, Anatomic handle, and Conical handle.

Here, I will resume and explain the advantage of each type of blade handles in table tennis. It depends on your playing style, that you can decide to choose the best handle for you. There are 6 main handles in table tennis equipment:

• Flared handle (FL): best for forehand dominant player, best for looping style. Chinese players prefer FL handle the most.
• Straight handle (ST), both Round Straight Handle (RST) or Square Straight Handle (SQST), good for control style. Smooth backhand-forehand transition. European players prefer using this type of handle. It provides Balance between Backhand and Forehand Power.
• Chinese Penhold (CPen), only used by Penhold player. Good to serve, and service return. Freedom of wrist. Good with forehand attack closed to the table. Weak on Backhand side.
• Anatomic handle (UTCan), preferred by a hitter. Fit very well in the arm. Mostly used in the USA. Provide deep grip (narrow grip for hitting). Weak at looping, weak at long distance.
• Conical handle (Elcon), similar to Flared handle, but rounder. Not very popular. Something between Straight handles and Flared handles. Good for the all-round style, soft style with spin. Not comfortable on a very big hand.

Here is the comparison table to show the pros and cons of each handle type:

Best handle that suits your playing style

Handle for forehand looping style

If you are the forehand dominant player (who loves to finish the point with Forehand loop), you won’t go wrong with the Flared handle. The flared handle has the bigger flare at the end, which gives you more confidence during your forehand shots.

Butterfly Viscaria (check price/ read review) with FL handle is a very good looping blade.

Handle for backhand dominant player

If you are the backhand favorite player (you stay close to the table and attack with your backhand drive or topspin), you should buy Straight handle. The straight handle allows quick transition from backhand to forehand and inverse. A backhand player doesn’t need to hit hard, but they need “speed”. Straight handle offers this option.

Butterfly Timo Boll ALC (check price/ read review) is one of the top 10 blades. It’s very comfortable for BH-FH transition.

Blade handle for hitting style

If you are the hitter, who hit on the bounce, you can choose an Anatomic handle. The anatomic handle gives a unique feel to your hand. It fit very well your palm. This handle type is used to hit hard. It doesn’t suit to spin oriented player. For hitter, you can choose hard carbon blade!

For example, choose Butterfly Tamca 500, or Butterfly Amultart (check price/ read review).

Blade handle for defender, chopping style

Defender prefers playing with “long” and “straight handle”. The advantage of long handle is: they give the defender more power, more torque power away from the table. 

Joola Chen Defender blade (Check price/ read review)

Victas Koji Matsushita (check price/ read reviews) very good defensive blade with ST handle.

And why defensive player love straight handle? Because, in many situations, they need to chop, to defend the ball just in front of their body, or far at corners.

So straight handle gives them the ability, the easy maneuver to transfer between the forehand and the backhand side. The best way to attack the defender is to attack the ball “directly to the body” of the defender. So to deal with that, defender prefers using the Straight handle.

My advice: If you are the defender, the best handle for you is: RST (Round Straight Handle).

Many top players,  professional defensive player choose the ST handle.

Choose best handle size

I don’t like (hate) the handle of several commercial table tennis blade. It’s too small. The handle doesn’t give the “confident feeling” in my hand.

Many players give “thank you” and “positive feedback” about my advice on choosing equipment. They improved a lot faster!

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Why is the handle too small now?

I really love the old blade in the years of 1960s to 1980s. The handle is well designed, very comfortable, and gives me so much feeling.

But then, the blade handle nowadays is too small. Why? The manufacturer just wants to reduce the prize of the blade for more competitive, for the business. They reduce the handle size because the handle takes a large portion of the wood material. But it’s not good for us, player.

• What is Miu Hirano equipment?
• What is Hugo Calderano equipment?

Solutions:

The too thin handle is bad for your feeling and confidence. You have 2 solutions: You can add the extra grip tape (Butterfly soft grip tape – Check price 1/ Check price 2/ read review) or order a custom handle. Pro players played with custom handle.

Here is the list of most common grip tape that many players used (including pro players like Samsonov).

The optimal blade handle size

Based on the Chinese coaching, the handle must be thick enough. So you can execute correctly the pressure on your shots. Normally, the pressure is performed on your thumb and your index finger.

• Use the Index finger to increase the quality of your forehand shots.
• Use both Index, and Thumb finger to increase the quality of the backhand shots.

With the thin handle (especially too thin at the top of the handle), you can’t perform well your shots. It’s very bad!

Choose the handle with the thickness more than 22.5 mm on the edge (the head of the handle where you put your finger).

I have known many cases that a player throw away their racket because of the bad handle.

Blade handle length

The perfect handle length is about 100 to 102 mm. Sometimes, defender (chopper) will prefer a longer handle 103 – 104 mm. A longer handle gives you more torque power. The longer handle is better for mid to long distance playing style: like chopper or two wings looper far from the table.

But don’t choose too short handle if you not Penhold player. Nowadays, the commercial blade, the handle length is just only about 90 to 95 mm. They reduce the production cost to increase gain. But this is bad for the players.

Optimal handle length is about 100 to 102 mm.