Ping Pong vs. Table Tennis
Aug 15th, 2006 by Don Ray
One of the passions I developed during my high school days was Ping-Pong. I just received this photo from my old high school buddy, Howard, and has it brought back some memories. The photo was taken in February of 1960.
As often as I could, I would go over to Howard’s house and play Ping-Pong. In this photo, I am getting ready to hit a backhand and Howard has his back to us. That is his sister, Linda - the cutie in the red sweater, to my left. Ah, she was my first love. I got to see Linda this year when I went to the US. It was the first time I had seen her since 1960 and yes, she was just as cute as ever!
Now if you didn’t know it, there is a difference between Table Tennis and Ping-Pong. Ping-Pong is just as it sounds. The ball is gently hit back and forth over the net and has this slow Ping and Pong sound to it. It is more of a social game and rarely becomes extremely competitive.
At this time I was beginning to make my transition from Ping-Pong to Table Tennis. Table Tennis is a real competitive sport. In the photo you can see that I am still using a sandpaper paddle. By the end of the year I will have moved to a Japanese Inverted Rubber paddle. It was so named because it had a layer of foam and a secondary rubber surface that had the pips turned to touch the foam side and leave the sticky rubber side out.
At the end of the year this photo was taken, I would be going to school at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. In the dorms at Texas Tech, I learned to play Table Tennis. This was a very competitive sport. While it wasn’t recognized as a true college sport, it had a large intramural following on campus and many of us traveled to play in Open State competitions.
While I won many of the Texas Tech tournaments, the best I ever did in one of the Open State tournaments was to finish second. What memories! Howard, thanks for sending me this photo.
Whoa… That brought back memories for me to. Gosh I spent every lunch hour for years playing table tennis at NCR where I was working. We were pretty good and some of us played in tournaments. Anyway, John Sharp and myself would take turns playing offense or defense. I liked defense best because John could slam shots pretty good and I loved to get back about five feet and return his slams. We would have an audience of workers watching and cheering us on. I still have my paddle somewhere. Red soft rubber. My serve was one that few could actually get back so I won a lot of games off my serve. Good post.
A roommate of mine and I would also go to the student Union and another location and play the same as you and your friend. We would do the same – one take offense and then switch to defense. We would get quite a crowd watching.
I had about 6 different types of paddles at the time. One that I liked was a Slazenger, which had the pips out. Slazenger is a British firm best known for their tennis rackets. Those were the good old days. Not much money, but I never seemed to notice.