Ping Pong

Ping pong — table tennis to the serious player — began as an after-dinner diversion in Victorian England, where books served as nets, champagne corks as balls, and cigar-box lids as paddles. It was parlor play, genteel and improvised, and for a time it was called, among other names, whiff-whaff. The name "Ping-Pong" was trademarked by a manufacturer, and the sport grew up around the trade name the way Kleenex grew up around tissue.

What makes ping pong deceptive is the size of the stage. The table is nine feet long and five wide — a rectangle smaller than a doorway — and yet the game played on it is among the fastest of all reflex sports. A smash crosses the net in under a quarter of a second; the ball, light as a feather, spins at thousands of revolutions per minute. The paddle is a small wooden thing, and the whole of the skill lives in the wrist: the difference between topspin and backspin, between a drive and a chop, is a few degrees of angle at the moment of contact. Watch a top player and the ball seems to obey them; watch a beginner and the same ball skids away untouched.

For the empty nester, ping pong is perhaps the most accessible of all racket sports. The equipment is inexpensive, the table folds away, and a basement or garage becomes a court. The barrier to a respectable rally is low; the barrier to genuine mastery is, like all small-stage sports, surprisingly high. It is also a game that favors guile over power — the best players are often the oldest, the ones who have learned that placement and spin beat force every time. The reflexes dim with age, but the understanding of spin deepens, and a clever player will trouble a faster one for decades.

To take up ping pong is to discover that a small table contains an entire sport — that nine feet of surface can hold a lifetime of spin, angle, and quiet rivalry.