Championship Table Tennis a New Ballgame
One quick peek into Exhibit Hall A of the San Diego Convention Center in the next two days, and about the only thing to strike a chord of recognition would be the tables.
Everything else has undergone partial to radical transformations. The balls are different, the paddles are different, the apparel is different, even the name is fighting to establish its own identity.
Sixty tables have been set up to accommodate the 350 players competing in the 34 events of the U.S. Table Tennis Assn. National Championships that began Thursday morning and run through Sunday.
A lot has changed since San Diego last played host to this event, in 1967 at Balboa Park, and spectators might be surprised by what they see. This is not the same game--commonly referred to as Ping-Pong--you used to see played in your neighbors’ back yards at family get-togethers.
“It’s a pretty fast game, isn’t it?” Eric Boggan, a two-time national champion, said.
Eric’s father, Tim, said that because the game has come to rely on the serve and return of serve and not on long rallies, table tennis has lost some of its lure to spectators.
“There’s a serve and a return, and sometimes that’s it,” said Tim, a former player and the editor of the U.S. Table Tennis Assn.’s magazine. “It’s not that good a game for the spectators, because it’s over before you know it. The technological advances have a lot to do with it.”
Like tennis, its sidekick, playing surfaces are all-important in table tennis. In fact, quite a stir was created on opening day when a player in the men’s open division slipped on the widely preferred wood floor, and the USTTA board decided to play the remainder of the open division matches on the slip-free concrete.
Players agreed that advances have changed the face of the game, but the women’s game, following the lead of its sister, women’s tennis, is still much more of a finesse game than the men’s.
“The women’s game is much different,” Tim Boggan said.
Fremont’s Patricia Hocke, 14, is the epitome of concentration as she rallies with her coach of a year, Masaaki Tajima. Hocke won the national girls’ under-14 title in August, and aspires to be an international star.
On a rating system that starts at 800 and reaches 2,900, Hocke has a rating of 1,331, which changes as often as she plays.
When a player defeats someone with a higher rating, his rating will improve. Likewise, if he loses to someone with a lower rating, his will drop. Playing in the Under-17 division Thursday, Hocke defeated a male with a much higher rating.
“This is going to help her ratings tremendously,” Tajima said.
Many of the competitors are taking time off work and paying their own expenses to be here. Hocke is missing three days of school, but said her teachers are understanding.
“They don’t have many athletes in the school who go play in national tournaments,” she said, “so they think it’s neat.”
Hocke said there is some resistance on the part of people to recognize what she does as legitimate sport, but that the stereotypes are changing.
“The ball’s coming over the net at 100 miles per hour sometimes,” said Hocke, who works out five hours a day and gives up trips to the mall and school dances with her friends to train. “It’s a sport.”
The 1988 debut of table tennis as a medal sport at the Olympics in Seoul also has helped sell table tennis as a sport.
“The perception is changing,” said five-time national champion Dan Seemiller, president of the USTTA. “People who watched it at the Olympics saw that it’s a tough, fast sport.”
Seemiller, 36, is one of a handful of people who has made a living as a professional table tennis player. He said there are probably a dozen men and only eight women who can bypass mainstream careers and survive solely on the meager prize money, limited sponsorship and sporadic coaching jobs the sport offers.
“I’ve done it since I was 18,” said Seemiller, the third-seeded player in open play, “and today, the opportunities for top players are much better. The future looks tremendous.”
The future is not only rosy, it’s long-lived.
Morris Jackson, 40, is a academic adviser with the Saudi Arabian Embassy to the United States, and physically as fit as in his 20s. A former basketball player, Jackson began playing table tennis 10 years ago, when he was looking for something to replace a pick-up game of hoops with the boys.
“Look at some of these people,” said Jackson, the champion in the Under-2000 rating division last year. “They’re in great shape. There aren’t that many sports the elderly can do.”
Jackson didn’t qualify for the men’s open round of 24, but is playing in several other rating divisions. Younger players are limited to playing in seven events.
Tournament Notes
Defending open women’s champion Insook Bhushan, 38, of Aurora, Colo., and men’s champion, Jim Butler, 19, of Iowa City, Iowa, are competing in San Diego. . . . Finals are slated to start Sunday at 2 p.m., for the women, and 3 p.m. for the men. . . . Through Friday, Butler, John Onifade of Washington, Sean O’Neill of McLean, Va., and Eric Boggan of Merrick, N.Y., had 5-0 records in round robin play. In women’s open play, Bhushan, Julie Ou of Daly City, Lilly Hugh of Cocoa, Fla., and Diane Gee of San Carlos were undefeated.