MEDFORD -The ball hung ever so slightly over the edge of thetable, spinning fiercely at eye level before darting down into thelast bit of white paint below.
Alex Landsman didn't even try to swing. Like a batter frozen by aperfect curveball, he had no chance of making contact with the'loop.'
Landsman played plenty of table tennis growing up, but this was awhole new game. Joining the club team at the University of NewHampshire back in the early 1980s, the Londonderry, N.H., residentquickly discovered there was more to this sport than just the pingand the pong.
'People moving up to the next level really have to hit with anexperienced player because most of them have these very high-qualityrubber rackets and they put a lot of spin on the ball,' saidLandsman, a 45-year-old software engineer who still spends at leastone day per week playing the sport. 'Guys were putting a lot of spinunder the ball and it would just roll down my racket. I couldn't getit back to the net, let alone get it over. I realized it's acompletely different game at the next level.'
Landsman and software colleague David Marcus now serve as vicepresidents for the Boston Table Tennis Center in Medford. Nestledamong a pack of Mystic Avenue businesses, the 3,000-square- footfacility features plenty of loops, chops, and drops on any givenevening.
The Medford locale brings in players from beginners to pros thisis hardly the dusty table fighting for space in your parents'basement.
'The club has some of the best conditions of any club in the US,with six world-class tables, a wood floor, air conditioning, andexcellent lighting,' said Marcus. His only complaint, he added, wouldbe that the courts are a bit cramped.
But it's hard to nitpick given the setup. Landsman estimates thehardwood floor cost nearly $50,000 and was constructed with a cushionpadding below that eases the tension on tender knees like his.
Just make sure you bring your 'A' game.
'Most people play a higher level here than others do in theirbasements, so people who just want to beat people show up and end upgetting beat pretty bad,' said Landsman. 'Some of those people don'tshow up again, but a large portion are fascinated by it. They want toget better and they want to work at it.'
There's plenty of help on staff at the center, where coaches LiangLiung and Man-Wa Wong are grizzled veterans. Liung trained with theMalaysian national team as a youth, while Wong is a former Hong Kongnational coach who spent time as a player with the Chinese nationalsquad, according to Landsman.
Athletes here, paying fees by the day, month, or year, routinelywork up a sweat on the court. They still use the same pimpled racketsmost players grew up with, but paddles today feature carbon layersaimed at maximizing the sweet spot.
You'll see various styles of holding the racket, from the penholdgrip (paddle held like a writing instrument) to the shakehand gripmore common to American players.
Marcus, a 49-year-old Somerville resident who was president of theMIT Table Tennis Club while earning his PhD in mathematics there, ismore than happy to acclimate new players to the sport's lingo andprovide a history lesson behind the name.
'Ping Pong was trademarked when the game started as something youplayed on your dining room table,' said Marcus, referring to howEnglish manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd. claimed the name in 1901.The company later sold the rights to Parker Brothers. 'When theystarted the US Table Tennis Association, now called USA Table Tennis,they had to come up with another name.'
And thus, table tennis was born, but the sport continues to growin the new millennium. Earlier this year, Rockstar Games released thevisually stunning 'Table Tennis' for the next-generation video gameconsole XBox 360, allowing gamers to 'experience the unmatchedintensity of the real-life sport with an authentic physics engine andintuitive gameplay that mimics the exhilarating experience found intrue international competition.'
But for players who compete in the sport, nothing beats the realthing. Eighty-two players of all ages turned out for the annual BayState Games tournament held last month at the Boston Table TennisCenter.
Landsman walked away with a silver medal after pairing with KlausVan Leyen in the masters doubles, while North Andover's Kevin Cheungtook home a pair of prizes by earning gold in the scholastic doubleswith Mashpee's Justin Deluca, and silver in the scholastic novicesingles division (where Deluca prevailed in his first tournamentappearance).
Landsman sees more and more people coming out to local tabletennis clubs. It doesn't take much exposure to catch the sport's bug.
'Back around 1987, I began driving into Boston from Portsmouth,N.H., on Friday nights,' recalled Landsman. 'We'd play that night,then I'd stay over someone's house and we'd play again Saturday. ThenI'd stay over someone's house and we'd play again Sunday. We had agang of guys that loved the sport and we couldn't get enough of it.'
