Table Tennis Players Looking for Respect

The biggest Hollywood hit of last year, “Forrest Gump,” gave table tennis some much-needed publicity. But players at the National Senior Table Tennis Tournament in Leisure World said they wish the simpleton from the South could have given their sport something else--credibility.

Dan Seemiller, the top-rated player at the seventh annual over-40 event, said table tennis is taken about as seriously as Tom Hanks’ character, Forrest Gump, a fictional character who was a member of the table tennis team the United States sent to China in 1971.

“Americans still think of it as Ping-Pong,” said Seemiller, who won $1,300 over three days of the tournament. “Our image is awful. Ping-Pong is a game here and not a sport like it is in Asia and Europe. So why would anybody play a game seriously?”

Anyone who saw Seemiller and his fellow competitors dive for balls and run into walls Monday, would agree that table tennis is to be taken seriously. Like John McEnroe talked to a tennis ball, Seemiller mumbled words of encouragement to the little yellow ball after intense points.

After losing the over-40 open singles to Bela Frank on Sunday, Seemiller redeemed himself Monday by winning the senior elite singles, over Frank, and the under-4300 (rating category) doubles with partner Dana Hanson of Highland Springs, Va. Sunday, Seemiller, 42, also won the draw doubles event.

“I couldn’t sleep [Sunday] night thinking about losing that match Sunday,” said Seemiller, who lives in Pittsburgh. “I played really tight in that match and kept making the same mistakes.”

But against Lin Ming Chui of Lexington, Mass., and Al Martz of Salt Lake City in the 4300 doubles final--a specialized doubles event--Seemiller made few errors as he carried Hanson for most of the match, in which Seemiller and Hanson won two of three games.

Hanson, who like Seemiller coaches table tennis, would like to see table tennis move beyond Hollywood.

“We haven’t found any secret,” he said. “We don’t know what to do to take this to the next level here. Tennis was the same place we were 30 or 40 years ago. But it’s still hard for us here to get international competition, and that makes it hard to get above a certain playing level.”

Seemiller and Hanson said table tennis should have capitalized more on Forrest Gump’s popularity.

“It’d be nice if there was a Forrest Gump II, because even in the movie people took our sport as a joke,” Hanson said.

“We should have gotten more out of Forrest Gump, but we just weren’t prepared for it,” said Seemiller, who played professionally in Germany for two years. “If nothing else, at the least the people who saw the movie can appreciate the difficulty of the sport.”