Hooked on Table Tennis : Leon Ruderman Even Designed Home Around the Game

It’s hard to tell that Leon Ruderman had table tennis in mind when he and a longtime architect friend designed his Manhattan Beach home about a year and a half ago.

The fancy, two-story house has an Art Deco flair that makes it stick out among its neighbors on the Strand. It could easily earn a spot on “Miami Vice,” if the show were still taping.

“The contractors laughed,” said Ruderman, “when they saw that the whole place was designed around the table tennis room.”

That’s Ruderman’s hangout, his obsession. A Ping-Pong table and practice-ball machine occupy the room, which is in the center of the house. There’s also a rack with about 60 trophies that Ruderman has won throughout his 20-year table tennis career.

The energetic 61-year-old is the state’s top-ranked player in his age group and 12th in the world. Last year he won the doubles title at the U.S. National Championships in Las Vegas with partner Y. C. Lee of Palos Verdes Estates.

Ruderman also reached the round of 16 at the Veterans World Championships in Yugoslavia, a tournament that included 1,600 of the world’s top senior competitors from 70 different countries. He lost to the eventual champion, a German.

In 1987 he placed third in doubles at the World Masters Championships in Toronto, and in 1985 and 1986 he placed second in the 50-and-over division at the U.S. Nationals.

“He’s very special for his age,” said Ruderman’s 28-year-old coach, Wei Wang, a former professional player in China who is ranked third in the United States. “He likes to learn new things and play very aggressively. Usually people his age play slow and defensively, and they don’t want to learn new things.”

Not Ruderman. He’s a physically fit and ambitious businessman who plans to compete as long as his feet will hold him. He also hopes to promote table tennis, which became an Olympic event in 1988 and is extremely popular in countries such as China, Yugoslavia and Germany.

He eventually wants to make Manhattan Beach a hotbed of table tennis. Last spring he introduced a program to the city Recreation Department that will feature open play, tournaments and instructional classes. The plan was immediately approved by the city and will begin next month at the Manhattan Heights Community Center auditorium.

“We put it before the Parks and Recreation Committee, and they really liked it,” said Ed Montan, assistant recreation director for Manhattan Beach. “Leon has been very helpful. He’s donated a lot of time to the program. He even volunteered to train instructors.”

Besides organizing the Manhattan Beach program, Ruderman helped secure funding for it and got an instructor, Wei, who teaches similar programs in Orange County and West Covina. Ruderman also plans to have a series of local tournaments. The first one will take place at Mira Costa High School from Friday to Sunday and will feature beginners as well as advanced players.

“It occurred to me,” Ruderman said, “that Manhattan Beach has always been athletically oriented. That’s why I want to use Manhattan Beach as a focal point to generate additional interest in the game. We have the equipment and the opportunity here.”

Lee, the founder and director of the Chinatown table tennis club in Los Angeles, says Ruderman has always been an advocate for the game. They have known each other for 10 years.

“I think what he’s doing is terrific,” Lee said. “When I first came (to the South Bay) in 1972, there was a small club in Palos Verdes, but it didn’t last long. We need to get it started in the area, and he has the dedication and the energy to do it.”

Ruderman and his son, Gary, also own a production company that specializes in table tennis videos. The tapes, which include highlights of exciting world championship matches, have been distributed in 12 countries.

“The Magic Johnson of Yugoslavia plays table tennis,” Ruderman said. “To give you an example of how popular it is in other countries, the U.S. Table Tennis Assn. has about 6,000 members. In West Germany there are about 700,000 members, in Japan there’s 300,000 and in France 200,000.”

Ruderman knows it won’t be easy to match those figures in a country where football, baseball and basketball take priority among most sports fans. But he plans to make the effort to get others involved in what has been his fixation for more than 40 years.

He initially became involved with table tennis in 1946, as a high school senior in New York. He was a top-ranked chess player and had been invited to compete in a tournament along with nine of the state’s best high school players.

Discouraged after losing most of his chess matches in the prestigious event, Ruderman took a walk down Broadway and was attracted by the sound of Ping-Pong balls coming from a table tennis club.

He played the game throughout his senior year in high school but was inactive through college. It wasn’t until 1973 that he brought his paddles out of retirement after watching a tournament in Redondo Beach with his two sons.