Ping Pong

Sometimes, the best offense in table tennis is a good defense.

Li Jie and Hitomi Sato embarked upon an epic and seemingly endless rally during the first round of a Qatar Open match Thursday.

Neither player was willing to take a significant risk in an attempt to win the single point, and thus the rally went on for an incredible 10 minutes, 13 seconds. Perhaps even more remarkable is that play was only stopped when an outside ball interfered with the action.

Try replicating this feat in your basement the next time you and a buddy have an extra 10 minutes to spare.

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A grass seed salesman I know went head to head with the power of ping pong and lived to tell about it.

Table tennis has been known by a variety of names including gossima, flim-flam, and ping pong. Experts believe that the game was created in England during the late 1800's. Early versions of the game used balls made of cork on table tops. 

The International Table Tennis Federation was formed in 1926. It soon became a favorite in many nations and led to the dominance of the game by nations like Japan and China. 

Ping pong was the reason for the first entrance of any American sports organizations into the Chinese mainland after the communist takeover in 1949. In 1971, the American Ping Pong Team was in Japan for the 31rst World Table Tennis Championship. While they were there, they received a surprise invite from China to play. It initiated “Ping Pong Diplomacy” with the massive communist nation in the thick of the Cold War.

Ping pong has a history of breaking down barriers. 

A grass seed salesman from Wisconsin who I will call Wild Bill for the purpose of this article has been a life long player of ping pong. He recently told me about the wildest game he has ever played which also broke down a barrier. More specifically, it broke down a piece of drywall the size of his head.

Wild Bill traveled to Alabama for a sales meeting. When the meeting was over, he noticed a ping pong table in an entertainment area of the resort. He met an individual from California, and they struck up a game. The Californian had no idea that Wild Bill had been playing ping pong since he was a small child, that he had gone undefeated at church camp 40 years prior, that he had a stellar record in college, or that he had dominated his own children in the garage for the majority of their short lives.

The game rapidly became a heated contest. At a crucial point in the game, the Californian smashed the ball toward the left corner of the table. As Wild Bill recalls it, “I went horizontal, stretched out, planning a miraculous return. That's when the wall came out of nowhere. When my head hit the wall, there was quite a thud."

"Everyone in the room stopped. I was actually stuck in the wall for a moment. I pulled my head out. Dust was swirling around my head. I stood up and looked at the little circle in the wall where my head had been. Someone asked if I was okay. I said, 'Hell, yes, I'm fine—I missed the stud.' Someone started laughing. Then everyone started laughing. I was a little befuddled after that and wound up losing 21-16. I think my opponent's name was Harold.'”

Wild Bill doesn't think there was an “residual damage.” He says he was “a little dizzy when I pulled my head out of the wall. It's just a good thing I missed the stud.”

I think we can all be thankful for that. 

Imagine if you were a sports writer.

No, I mean one that gets paid for assignments and has actual press credentials for the Beijing Olympics.

Now, imagine that horse's rectum of a boss you have at the local paper is asking you to cover ping pong. So, you get some shots from Dr. Jellyfinger for your passport and fly to China. At the hotel desk, you tell some "new, local friends" that you are covering ping pong.

Tomorrow you wake up to a concrete floor on your back, leather straps around your limbs, and repeated drops of water falling directly between your eyes.

"What went wrong," you think to yourself, fighting off the inevitable madness promulgated by three years of Chinese water torture in a turn of the century prison?

What went wrong, ding dong, was that you mocked the rich history and tradition of the Republic of China by referring to table tennis as ping pong.

Journalists from Pennsyltucky could be imprisoned right now?

This exact scenario might not actually happen. But why risk it? Call the sport by its proper name.

Table tennis has come a long way since its introduction as an overweight aristocrat's non-sweating alternative to lawn tennis in 1890s England. Yes, I said England, not China.

I saw Forrest Gump too, and for years made the same assumption. It is, after all, commonly referred to in America as ping pong.

Today, players compete for big money on par with UFC fighters. But, I would prefer getting punched in the face for a living, given the choice.

They wield specially developed rubber-coated wooden and carbon-fibre rackets that are as expensive as Taylor Made Drivers. Various rubber compounds and glues are applied on the rackets to impart greater spin or speed.

Table tennis has become the world's largest participation sport, with 40 million competitive players worldwide and countless millions playing recreationally.

Still, not one of these participants has ever seen a woman naked. I guess that's about when I gave up the game yesterday.

Originally it began with cigar-box lids for rackets and a carved champagne cork for a ball. It was beer-pong before beer.

The team to watch, however, is China. They are led by the legendary Guoliang Liu.

In his birth town of Xinxiang, from the early age of six, the young Guoliang managed his first forehand drive. He very quickly adopted the Chinese playing style known as “penhold” and rapidly mastered the basics of table tennis. In 1991, aged 15, his efforts began to pay off—he was selected for the Chinese national team. The rest, as they say, is boring, too.

So, in the great, mentally-challenged tradition of Jeffy from The Ringer:

GO FOR GOLD!