Released in 2001, the DHS Hurricane 3 National is, quite possibly, the best table tennis rubber of all time. Why so? Simply because it’s won more Olympic medals and important tournaments than any other rubber.
Hurricane 3 National is the weapon of choice of the Chinese National Team. Because of their success, many non-Chinese players have also picked up this rubber.
This rubber is extremely hard and sticky, and it’s supposedly one of the spinniest rubbers there is. It has many unique advantages and disadvantages, which we’ll discuss in this review.
We bought and boosted a sheet of the Hurricane 3 National, played with it for around 10 hours to see what it’s all about, and we’ll help you decide if it would be a good fit for your game.
The strongest attribute of this rubber is its vast range of gears. Thanks to the sponge’s hardness and tackiness, it’s extremely easy to manage the speed of the game. Touching short is effortless and if you swing harder and harder you can produce extreme power.
However, we have mixed feelings about the Hurricane 3 National. Throughout our testing, we didn’t feel like paying the almost $100 price tag and going through the hassle of boosting it was worthwhile.
Perfect for: Intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced offensive players on their forehand side, advanced players on their backhand side. 3-10+ years of playing.
Ace
About the Reviewer
Alvaro brings 7+ years of playing experience. He’s tested 20+ rubbers for Racket Insight and his style is The Controller.
About the Review
Blade Used: Stratus Power Wood
Rubber Thickness: 2.15mm
Hours Tested: 10+
Recommended Playstyles
We recommend the Hurricane 3 National to intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced offensive players who play a Chinese-style powerlooping game.
Design of the DHS Hurricane 3 National
The DHS Hurricane 3 National comes in specially designed white packaging, marking it apart from other rubbers in the Hurricane range.
Inside, we can find the rubber. We ordered a red sheet, of 2.2mm thickness, in 40-degree hardness.
The topsheet of the rubber, as expected, is extremely tacky. It is definitely tackier than the regular Hurricane 3 NEO we’ve also reviewed.
Here’s a short clip showing just how tacky this Hurricane 3 National really is:
The sponge itself is extremely, extremely hard. We used our durometer to test its hardness, and its adjusted reading was 59° on the ESN scale (after boosting it!). This is comfortably the hardest rubber we’ve ever reviewed.
Speaking of boosting, for this review we treated the rubber with two layers of Falco Tempo Long.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, here’s our full guide on how to boost a table tennis rubber.
In short, boosting is a process in which a chemical product, called booster, is used to soften the sponge and give it more tension. This process is supposed to give the rubber a better feeling, more speed, and more spin.
We applied a light layer of Falco Tempo Long and waited for 24 hours. The rubber domed slightly:
Afterwards, we applied a second layer of booster and let the rubber sit for another 24 hours. This was the result:
As you can see, the rubber was so domed that it was impossible to glue in that state.
So, I waited for around 5 days for the rubber to flatten before gluing it onto my racket. It’s very important that you wait this time so that the rubber stays on the blade after you glue it.
Before continuing our review, I must stress that boosting these rubbers is, in my opinion, mandatory if you intend to use them for offensive play.
There will be people who’ll say you can play with these rubbers unboosted.
But then, what’s the point? If you want to use this rubber to attack, and you’re paying $100 to use an extremely hard and slow rubber, you would have been better off spending that money elsewhere.
As for which booster to use, most people recommend using Haifu’s booster, and others recommend using Kailin. Ma Lin and other Chinese players boost their rubbers with Haifu, so if you’re going to purchase a booster for your Hurricane 3 National I’d recommend Haifu.
We used Falco because that’s what we had at the time, and it did the job.
The Pong Professor published a video some time back testing the effects of different boosters on the Hurricane 3. I’ll link it below for you to take a look if you’re interested.
The effect of the Falco booster is supposed to last anywhere between 1 and 2 months. After that, the rubber would lose its added speed and you’d have to boost it again (most likely with reduced effect) or change it for a new sheet and start all over again.
It’s important you understand boosting so that you know what you’re getting into if you buy this rubber. You can’t play with it out of the package, you have to go through a whole multistage procedure to soften it up and give it more speed which takes around a week.
After all the effort, these effects will last for two months before needing to do it all over again.
I don’t know about you, but, when I buy a new rubber, I want to glue it ASAP and head to the club. Needing to wait 1 week to play with it is quite a hassle if you ask me.
But, all of this is warranted if the playing characteristics are excellent, right? Let’s talk about that then.
Playtesting the DHS Hurricane 3 National
We tried the DHS Hurricane 3 National with our usual testing blade: the Donic Original Carbospeed.
The combination wasn’t the best, as the Donic blade is very hard and stiff, and the 40° Hurricane we got is also extremely hard at 59 degrees ESN.
In the end, the whole combination ended up being very hard to use and quite hard to get the characteristic spin out of the Hurricane.
This wasn’t due to a lack of grip, far from it, as this rubber excels at spinning the ball, but rather, from a lack of flexiness and softness from the whole setup.
If we were to do this all over again, I’d get a softer Hurricane, the 38-degree version, or the 39-degree version at most, and pair it with a softer and more flexible blade, like a Viscaria or a 7-ply all-wood blade, like a Clipper.
I highly recommend going for the 38 or 39 variants rather than the 40-degree one.
In terms of speed, the base speed of this setup (believe it or not) was extremely slow, even with an OFF+ blade and two layers of booster.
It was really hard to put speed on the ball. I had to swing with excessive force to get speed out of the rubber. If I didn’t, I’d fail to produce any kind of successful attack.
Driving and Looping
This rubber was, without a doubt, made for looping. Looping with this rubber has a unique set of advantages and disadvantages but I’ll come to that soon. Let’s start with driving and flat-hitting.
I honestly found driving and flat-hitting the ball with this rubber well below par, considering this is an offensive rubber.
The reason is due to its stickiness and slow base speed. Even though we get a relatively good sense of control, the ball sticks to the rubber for way too long, and it’s very hard to get high speeds with flat hits.
European rubbers with grippy topsheets and bouncy sponges are miles, miles ahead of Chinese rubbers when it comes to driving and flat-hitting the ball. They simply shoot the ball in a faster and more direct way.
This is why Chinese players twiddle their rackets when smashing, the bouncier rubbers on their backhand side are much better for these strokes.
In terms of loops, the Hurricane National produces shots with a medium-low to low arc, which I didn’t like. Some people argue that the Hurricane’s low throw is an advantage because your shots are harder to block or counterloop.
I believe that, at an amateur level, the safety you get above the net is much more important than the benefit we just mentioned.
This rubber has an extremely unforgiving throw: it’s low so you don’t get much clearance over the net but it’s also long, the ball doesn’t dip as violently as with Euro or hybrid rubbers unless you brush the ball perfectly.
It’s said that Chinese rubbers are hard to use because it’s hard to clear the net but it’s also hard not to overshoot the table. This holds true with the National Hurricane. If you mishit the ball, both scenarios can happen.
In terms of looping, other than its throw, you can get good speed and spin out of the Hurricane, but you can get power much easier with other rubbers to be honest.
The speed and spin we got when powerlooping was adequate but the quality we got on regular loops was below par. ESN rubbers and hybrid rubbers are much better in this respect.
Here’s a video showing the shot quality you get when looping with the National Hurricane 3:
In terms of open-ups, the Hurricane 3 was quite enjoyable. If you swing upwards, you can get tons of spin on the ball. If you also hit forwards, you can easily hit winners against backspin.
The Hurricane is great at overpowering incoming spin. This is one of the strengths of tacky rubbers, they stick onto the ball and change the spin more easily than grippy rubbers. This makes it possible to “ignore” incoming spin to some extent.
This effect comes in very handy when counterlooping. Counterlooping close to the table was quite difficult because of its throw, but not because of the incoming spin.
I’m sure that with a flexier, higher-throwing blade the Hurricane would be a great counterlooping rubber. On the Carbospeed however, the throw was a bit too unforgiving.
Counterlooping away from the table yields great results if you swing fast. You have more time to set up a big attack, and therefore, to accelerate onto the ball.
You probably won’t pass anyone on speed alone but you can load the ball with incredible amounts of spin.
Serve and Receive
The DHS Hurricane 3 National is probably the best offensive rubber to serve and receive with, period.
In terms of serves, it produces tons of spin, is very easy to keep the ball low to the net, and it’s also extremely easy to control the ball. I was able to place the ball anywhere I wanted on serving.
In terms of serve receive, this rubber is the best high-performance rubber there is when it comes to the passive receive.
Touching short is effortless and you can push the ball shorter and lower than with any other rubber. You just have a lot more control and time with the ball.
Because the sponge has very little bounce and the topsheet is sticky you can control the ball superbly. It’s a benefit that also holds true when it comes to pushing long.
This is one of the biggest strengths of Chinese rubbers: they support the Chinese 3rd ball attack style by being exceptional for serving, and they make it easy to touch short and set up opportunities for your own attack this way.
In terms of the active serve receive (flicks) we didn’t really enjoy using the Hurricane. We much prefer flicking with bouncier and higher-throwing rubbers, but if you’re going to use it on the forehand side it doesn’t make much of a difference as the forehand flick isn’t played that often.
Blocking and Chopping
Blocking with the Hurricane 3 National is like a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, its slow speed makes it easy to control incoming speed.
On the other hand, the Hurricane is so slow that if you perform passive blocks with this rubber, you’re going to hand your opponent an extremely easy ball.
Blocking with this rubber is just not viable past a certain level. You do have good control but neither passive nor active blocks are effective at giving you a chance to win the point.
In terms of chopping, this is a superb rubber. Many defenders play with the Hurricane 3 and it’s easy to see why: you get great control over the ball, you can put tons of spin onto it and it’s not hard to control the height of each chop.
Hurricane 3 National Alternatives To Consider
The Butterfly Dignics 09c is a faster and higher throwing alternative to the Hurricane 3 National.
The Andro Rasanter C53 is also a more explosive alternative to the Hurricane 3 National.
The commercial Hurricane 3 NEO is very similar to the National version at a fraction of the price.
Overall Reflections on The DHS Hurricane 3 National
The Hurricane 3 National is the perfect offensive rubber for some players under the right circumstances, if and only if certain criteria are met:
- The player must have a very high swing speed (and good athleticism, if possible).
- The player should choose exactly the correct hardness (we recommend 38 or 39 degrees).
- The player should boost the rubber (we recommend 2 layers of Haifu booster).
- The player should pair the rubber with a suitable blade, like a Viscaria or a Hurricane Long V.
- And, the player should play with a traditionally ‘Chinese’ style technique.
Under any other circumstances, I’d recommend other rubbers. Simply because you can grab any offensive blade, slap on some European offensive rubbers, and you will have a good enough racket for offensive play.
More importantly, you’ll have a much safer, easier to use and more confidence-inducing racket.
However, for the right player, the Hurricane 3 is a beast in the short game, superb for power looping, counterlooping, and allows you to deliver unbeatable serves.
In my experience, my swing speed wasn’t nearly enough to reap the offensive benefits of the Hurricane, and I’d very much prefer using safer and bouncier rubbers.
Alvaro’s a qualified ITTF Level 1 Coach who's been playing Table Tennis since he was 15 and is now ranked within the top 50 in his native Argentina. He loves to compete in provincial tournaments and is always looking for ways to improve. Alvaro made his favorite memories with a racket in hand, and he joined the RacketInsight team to share his passion with other players!
Blade: Butterfly Fan Zhendong ALC | Forehand: Butterfly Dignics 09c | Backhand: Butterfly Tenergy 19
Playstyle: The Controller
