U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : TABLE TENNIS : The World of Ping-Pong Parenting

His game belongs in a museum. “It’s the old Hong-Kong-pinpoint-garage game,” a man said knowingly.

The reference is to the paddle being held with handle up between fore and middle fingers, rec room style.

“No chance,” the man said.

His opponent played the hip, modified-European style--shaking hands with the paddle, using the slashing strokes of the power game.

The older man stood fairly close to the table, seemingly defensive, while the kid backed up and swung from the heels. Lim Ming Chui, 43, learned table tennis and became a champion in Hong Kong, where it is akin to religion.

He taught Chi Sun-Chui, 17, to play in Massachusetts, where the game provides something to do at home on a cold winter’s night.

Thursday, in the U.S. Olympic Festival’s peculiar team table tennis competition, son Chi, playing for the East, beat father Lim, playing for the North, 21-17, 21-10.

Call it a rite of passage.

“In table tennis, the most important things are speed and spin,” Lim Ming Chui said. “A young man should have an advantage.”

An hour later, with the North leading, five matches to four, and one doubles match to play, Lim teamed with 44-year-old David Sakai and beat Chi and 14-year-old Eric Owens, 12-21, 21-13, 21-13, for a 6-4 North team victory.

Patience that is the product of maturity kept the ball in play and waited for the impetuosity of youth to generate enough mistakes for payback.

Maybe the passage isn’t complete.

They are kindred spirits--more alike than different, but different nevertheless. The age gap requires it. No 17-year-old is like his dad, even if they excel at the same game, are educationally compatible and have similar life aspirations.

Lim Ming Chui, Hong Kong champion at 15, over-30 and over-40 U.S. national champion and world-class doubles player, came to the United States at 16 to enroll at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He learned that opportunity is sometimes muted by prejudice. “I became a citizen in 1970, and I was told mistakenly at that time I had to be a citizen three years to play for a national team,” he said. “The country was not ready to fully accept Asians then.

“So I missed out on being part of the team that helped open the door to China for the United States in 1971, even though I qualified for it. They told me I was not eligible.”

And he dealt with prosperity, playing against the Chinese when they returned the visit a year later--and staying to raise a family while working as an engineer at Raytheon, where one of his projects has been the Patriot missile that was so successful in the Persian Gulf war.

Chi Sun-Chui, who has been the under-18 national champion for two years, came up with the Celtics and Red Sox in Boston. He learned table tennis at home, got better at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s training center at Colorado Springs, Colo., and, at 17, is something of an academic prodigy--a rising junior at MIT with a bent toward computer science.

He learned that opportunity can generate its own reward. “It was very, very hard to get him going in table tennis,” Lim said. “When he was younger, he was very good in baseball, very good in basketball. There are lots of honors there, more than table tennis.

“But there are not so many good athletes playing table tennis, so he found he could dominate the competition.”

And he deals with impatience.

“I find the technical world kind of boring,” Chi said. “I like some things--like robotics. But in table tennis, you get an immediate reward. In science, at MIT, the reward is down the road.”

Psychologists preach the value of individual achievement over team success in child development. Lim Ming Chui practiced their preaching with his son, Chi.

Now the pupil has outgrown the teacher. Because of the age difference, they have played one another only five times in tournaments, and Chi won for the second time Thursday. The first, four years ago, was met not with resentment for creeping age, but with something akin to awe.

“I was a few points down and my concentration wasn’t 100%,” Lim said. “I lost the first game, then I won the second game easily. The third game, each of us was very serious, and then I think I found myself admiring my son, rather than worrying about beating my opponent.”

It is admiration that continues, albeit tempered by expectations and conflicting emotions of a parent and son.

“I think my son can unplug his emotions,” Lim said, smiling across the table at a serious son. “He can treat me like an opponent, rather than a father. I don’t think I can do that.

“My prime is over. The goal is to get the young better.”

Still, there is a parent’s role.

“I feel I lost to a better player today. But if he played badly, I wanted to beat him. . . .”

”. . . .to teach me a lesson,” Chi finished.