From the Wall Street Journal Website
Seems that Ping-pong shares a lot in common with Pool...including Barry Hearn organizing a World Championship
Interesting that in order to make the game more spectator-friendly they want to slow it down.
The Fight to Save Ping Pong
Some Players Are Trying to Add to the Game's Excitement by Going With Paddles Designed for Power Rather Than Spin
By FREDERICK DREIER
Every sport has its seminal, game-changing moment, when new techniques or technology brings about a revolution in play.
For ping pong, that moment came in 1952.
Rec room historians love to tell the tale of Marty Reisman, the skinny Jewish kid from Manhattan's Lower East Side who entered that year's Table Tennis World Championships in Bombay as the front-runner. Standing in Reisman's way was the little-known Japanese player Hiroji Satoh, who used an unorthodox paddle fashioned with spongy rubber on each side. Unlike the hard, sandpaper-sided paddles of the day, the sponge allowed Satoh to manipulate the ball with vicious spins, flummoxing his opponents. With his competitive advantage, Satoh handily beat Reisman en route to the world title.
Sponge quickly replaced sandpaper paddles on the international circuit. Asian players came to dominate, and the sport evolved into its modern era, where spin decides the outcome.
Reisman refused to evolve. His flamboyant style and hustler persona made him America's foremost ping pong personality, and he used his celebrity to promote "hardbat" competitions, which outlawed sponge paddles in favor of old-school sandpaper. Until his death in December at age 82, Reisman would tell anyone within earshot why sandpaper was superior to sponge.
"If you got Marty started on hardbat versus sponge, he'd talk to you all night, maybe until 2 a.m.," said Dean Johnson, Reisman's longtime friend and member of the Table Tennis Hall of Fame. "That was his life. He really hated sponge."
Reisman's arguments against sponge and spin have become the battle cry of table tennis purists. Excessive spin, they say, shortens rallies and puts too much emphasis on a player's wrist movement, not his foot speed and lateral reach. The shortened rallies make the game boring to watch. And sponge rackets can cost in excess of $300.
"It's hard to keep the ball on the table with sponge," said Tahl Leibovitz, a member of the U.S. Paralympic team. "Sponge is a more complex game because deception is part of it."
In the months since Reisman's death, his hardbat movement has gained steam in ping pong bars and professional table-tennis halls across the world. This past January, veteran English sports promoter Barry Hearn organized the World Championships of Ping Pong at the Alexandra Palace in London. The stock-car style tournament forced players to use sandpaper paddles.
Hearn, who has helped snooker, fishing and darts become mainstream televised sports in Great Britain, got the idea after meeting Reisman in 2009. Hearn saw images of Reisman playing at the Garden in the early 1950s in front of 20,000 fans and saw potential.
"For once in my life, I looked backward rather than forward in history, and I found out that current table tennis had no television appeal," Hearn said. "The rallies are too short. It lacks athleticism. It's just not big enough."
Hearn filled Alexandra Palace with booming rock music for the competition, and he made sure the beer stands were always pouring. He wooed top players with a $100,000 prize purse—10 times greater than Table Tennis's U.S. Open pays its winner. The two-day tournament attracted several thousand spectators and a million television viewers on Sky Sports.
"Guys would make these amazing shots from 15 feet past the table and just smash it into the corner," Hearn said. "The rallies went on and on. The crowd would go crazy."
In New York City, Reisman's vision has continued at a more grass roots level. In 2007 he founded the company Table Tennis Nation alongside former elite player and entrepreneur Tony Ettinger to produce simple sandpaper paddles for mass distribution.
The group now manufactures sandpaper paddles that are designed to make the game easier for novice players. The face of the sandpaper paddle is 25% bigger than that of a competition-grade sponge paddle. Layered wood and a carbon-fiber interior also create a bigger "sweet spot." It costs just $30, and players can customize designs on the paddle's face.
Ettinger claims the paddle also neutralizes spin from sponge paddles.
"A $300 sponge paddle tries to shorten the rallies," Ettinger said. "Our paddle is designed to make it easier to return the ball."
Table Tennis Nation promotes hardbat play at bars and restaurants around the city, and the upscale table-tennis club SPIN, with amateur tournaments it calls Slams. It also holds regular competitions at the headquarters of various tech startups, where ping pong tables have become regular office furniture.
The company's paddle, however, won't be seen at international tournament soon. The International Table Tennis Federation bans sandpaper paddles, requiring all players to use sponge.
Dr. Michael Babuin, chairman of USA Table Tennis, said the ITTF has no motivation to promote cheap sandpaper paddles, when the technology used in sponge paddles continues to drive the sport forward.
"They are not in the business of promoting sandpaper bats, they are in the business of promoting higher-dollar bats," Babuin said.
But Babuin believes the hardbat competitions could help bring more recreational participants further into the sport. A statistic often repeated by table tennis aficionados holds that 20 million Americans play recreational table tennis each year. USA Table Tennis, by contrast, has a membership of 9,000.
"We need to develop a grass-roots level," Babuin said. "In my opinion, there is no better way to bring people into the sport than with a sandpaper paddle."
Sandpaper's defeat by sponge frustrated Reisman for decades, said Johnson, who is writing a book on the history of American table tennis from 1931-1966. The chapter on Reisman contains numerous photos of the table tennis hero alongside various celebrities, always dressed in flashy styles, dark glasses and a fedora.
The book also contains a photo of a then 22-year-old Reisman, just before his famous match with Satoh in 1952. In the final years of his life, Johnson said, Reisman began to view his defeat by Satoh as a positive chapter in his life.
"It tickled him because so many people talked about what a tragedy it was that he lost in 1952," Johnson said. "But if he'd won, maybe he'd just be some other world champion."
Seems that Ping-pong shares a lot in common with Pool...including Barry Hearn organizing a World Championship
Interesting that in order to make the game more spectator-friendly they want to slow it down.
The Fight to Save Ping Pong
Some Players Are Trying to Add to the Game's Excitement by Going With Paddles Designed for Power Rather Than Spin
By FREDERICK DREIER
Every sport has its seminal, game-changing moment, when new techniques or technology brings about a revolution in play.
For ping pong, that moment came in 1952.
Rec room historians love to tell the tale of Marty Reisman, the skinny Jewish kid from Manhattan's Lower East Side who entered that year's Table Tennis World Championships in Bombay as the front-runner. Standing in Reisman's way was the little-known Japanese player Hiroji Satoh, who used an unorthodox paddle fashioned with spongy rubber on each side. Unlike the hard, sandpaper-sided paddles of the day, the sponge allowed Satoh to manipulate the ball with vicious spins, flummoxing his opponents. With his competitive advantage, Satoh handily beat Reisman en route to the world title.
Sponge quickly replaced sandpaper paddles on the international circuit. Asian players came to dominate, and the sport evolved into its modern era, where spin decides the outcome.
Reisman refused to evolve. His flamboyant style and hustler persona made him America's foremost ping pong personality, and he used his celebrity to promote "hardbat" competitions, which outlawed sponge paddles in favor of old-school sandpaper. Until his death in December at age 82, Reisman would tell anyone within earshot why sandpaper was superior to sponge.
"If you got Marty started on hardbat versus sponge, he'd talk to you all night, maybe until 2 a.m.," said Dean Johnson, Reisman's longtime friend and member of the Table Tennis Hall of Fame. "That was his life. He really hated sponge."
Reisman's arguments against sponge and spin have become the battle cry of table tennis purists. Excessive spin, they say, shortens rallies and puts too much emphasis on a player's wrist movement, not his foot speed and lateral reach. The shortened rallies make the game boring to watch. And sponge rackets can cost in excess of $300.
"It's hard to keep the ball on the table with sponge," said Tahl Leibovitz, a member of the U.S. Paralympic team. "Sponge is a more complex game because deception is part of it."
In the months since Reisman's death, his hardbat movement has gained steam in ping pong bars and professional table-tennis halls across the world. This past January, veteran English sports promoter Barry Hearn organized the World Championships of Ping Pong at the Alexandra Palace in London. The stock-car style tournament forced players to use sandpaper paddles.
Hearn, who has helped snooker, fishing and darts become mainstream televised sports in Great Britain, got the idea after meeting Reisman in 2009. Hearn saw images of Reisman playing at the Garden in the early 1950s in front of 20,000 fans and saw potential.
"For once in my life, I looked backward rather than forward in history, and I found out that current table tennis had no television appeal," Hearn said. "The rallies are too short. It lacks athleticism. It's just not big enough."
Hearn filled Alexandra Palace with booming rock music for the competition, and he made sure the beer stands were always pouring. He wooed top players with a $100,000 prize purse—10 times greater than Table Tennis's U.S. Open pays its winner. The two-day tournament attracted several thousand spectators and a million television viewers on Sky Sports.
"Guys would make these amazing shots from 15 feet past the table and just smash it into the corner," Hearn said. "The rallies went on and on. The crowd would go crazy."
In New York City, Reisman's vision has continued at a more grass roots level. In 2007 he founded the company Table Tennis Nation alongside former elite player and entrepreneur Tony Ettinger to produce simple sandpaper paddles for mass distribution.
The group now manufactures sandpaper paddles that are designed to make the game easier for novice players. The face of the sandpaper paddle is 25% bigger than that of a competition-grade sponge paddle. Layered wood and a carbon-fiber interior also create a bigger "sweet spot." It costs just $30, and players can customize designs on the paddle's face.
Ettinger claims the paddle also neutralizes spin from sponge paddles.
"A $300 sponge paddle tries to shorten the rallies," Ettinger said. "Our paddle is designed to make it easier to return the ball."
Table Tennis Nation promotes hardbat play at bars and restaurants around the city, and the upscale table-tennis club SPIN, with amateur tournaments it calls Slams. It also holds regular competitions at the headquarters of various tech startups, where ping pong tables have become regular office furniture.
The company's paddle, however, won't be seen at international tournament soon. The International Table Tennis Federation bans sandpaper paddles, requiring all players to use sponge.
Dr. Michael Babuin, chairman of USA Table Tennis, said the ITTF has no motivation to promote cheap sandpaper paddles, when the technology used in sponge paddles continues to drive the sport forward.
"They are not in the business of promoting sandpaper bats, they are in the business of promoting higher-dollar bats," Babuin said.
But Babuin believes the hardbat competitions could help bring more recreational participants further into the sport. A statistic often repeated by table tennis aficionados holds that 20 million Americans play recreational table tennis each year. USA Table Tennis, by contrast, has a membership of 9,000.
"We need to develop a grass-roots level," Babuin said. "In my opinion, there is no better way to bring people into the sport than with a sandpaper paddle."
Sandpaper's defeat by sponge frustrated Reisman for decades, said Johnson, who is writing a book on the history of American table tennis from 1931-1966. The chapter on Reisman contains numerous photos of the table tennis hero alongside various celebrities, always dressed in flashy styles, dark glasses and a fedora.
The book also contains a photo of a then 22-year-old Reisman, just before his famous match with Satoh in 1952. In the final years of his life, Johnson said, Reisman began to view his defeat by Satoh as a positive chapter in his life.
"It tickled him because so many people talked about what a tragedy it was that he lost in 1952," Johnson said. "But if he'd won, maybe he'd just be some other world champion."
