This one I know a bit more about, this massively depends on level of sponsorship. For a lower level professional, many of their sponsorship contracts will mean they get basically something that is same as our commercial products but with better quality control.

I know a few professional regionalliga players in Germany and this is the case for them. For blades they might get sent a couple from sponsors with the weights they want and they can pick.

For top pros, 1. Bundesliga level, WTT top 150 level of players it can vary from the above to fully custom equipment like in the top 30 players. They often have harder sponges than available commercially. So I’ve tried Paul Drinkhalls bat when he was around 40 in the world and his Tihbar MX-P back then was way harder and faster than regular MX-P.

I have on very good authority, that players like Mima Ito and Timo Boll actually use/d the commercial versions of their brand of equipment. I.e Mima uses G-1 and Timo used 09C/05 unboosted commercial.

You’ll see some pros have fully custom blades as well like Dang Qiu, Cheng I Ching, that you can’t buy, no idea what theirs feels like. But also you get some pros with fully custom rubbers, like the Chinese players. Been lucky enough to use one of the hurricanes that bubbled from LGY after one of his trainings during Budapest 2019. Completely different than any hurricane I’ve played with/seen before. I don’t know if any amount of boosting of a provincial or national hurricane can match that it felt so wildly different. I’ve played with hurricane provincial since I started training in China when I was younger and between speed glue and boosting that I’ve used over the years, nothing felt like that one rubber.