Dang Qiu's Gear
Updated
The German penholder Dang Qiu, world No. 11, plays a special-order Butterfly Timo Boll ALC with Dignics 09C on both the forehand and the reverse backhand.
- Blade · Butterfly Timo Boll ALC, penhold (special order)
- Forehand · Butterfly Dignics 09C
- Backhand · Butterfly Dignics 09C
- Grip · Penhold, reverse backhand
- Country · Germany
The setup
His blade is the Timo Boll ALC in a special order, and in penhold: Butterfly's own write-up on his grip, with his equipment as of February 2025, gives the Arylate-Carbon construction and the handle shape but no model number — the model comes from the shop, not from Butterfly's page. What he plays is not the flared market blade we list but his own penhold build of it. On both wings he plays Dignics 09C, the tackier face of Butterfly's Dignics line: the line's high-tension Spring Sponge X under a mildly tacky topsheet that holds the ball rather than skating over it. In our terms it sits in the mild-tack band — grip for short serve and the opening loop, but none of the slow, sticky character of a fully Chinese sheet.
The pairing is not the usual tacky-forehand, clean-backhand split. His game is the penholder reverse-backhand drive type, so the backhand is an attacking wing and gets the same sheet as the forehand; on the backhand he had Dignics 05 before this, the clean non-tacky sheet of the same family. That is the pattern our Dignics 09C page describes: the tacky face was once a forehand-only choice, and these days it turns up on the backhands of players who swing through from both sides.
He is the son of Qiu Jianxin, who has worked as Tomokazu Harimoto's private coach — the Harimoto album is the other card on this page built around a ZYRE-03 forehand.
Ordering
The rubbers are on the Rubbers price table at $73 a sheet in 2.1 mm red or black. The blade is the Timo Boll ALC on the Blades price list; ours is the flared handle, so name the penhold in the quote request and we will price it with the two sheets. See How to Order for the rest.