my latest obsession: table tennis

i don't even remember how i found it. maybe it was fortuitous. perhaps it was destiny. but a short while ago i discovered the wang chen table tennis club, located on 100th st. between broadway and west end, just five blocks from my apartment. i love table tennis. some of my most vivid childhood memories are of late nights spent in the basement in heated ping pong battles with my dad and brothers. i can even remember thinking that one day i wanted to play ping pong for the usa in the olympics. i was intrigued that such a place existed in the city and so i wandered in. i was greeted by two young asian ladies who informed me in broken english that the club was closed. they gave me a brochure and sent me on my way.

one of the reasons i love this city is because of the interesting people you meet and places you discover, sometimes right under your nose. this ping pong establishment is operated by wang chen. chen was born and raised in china. she was picked to play table tennis when she was in the first grade. she and her classmates threw balls into a basket and whoever landed three became table tennis specialists. by 9 she was training with the junior national team; by 11 she was a professional, training 8 hours a day; at 14, she became the junior singles champion; and at 17 she became a member of the chinese national team where she rose to the rank of #4 in the world. much to her dismay, however, she was passed over for the atlanta and sydney olympics. while her ranking alone would typically have qualified her for the games, the olympic committee limits china to three players because of its worldwide dominance in the sport. and the three chinese players that were olympic bound happened to hold the world rankings of #1, 2 and 3. following the sydney games, chen retired from ping pong and immigrated to the states. time past. chen was focused on teaching. but then a couple years ago one of her students convinced her she should make another go of pursuing her dream. although long past her prime and in her early thirties (considered an advanced age in the competitive world of ping pong), she started training again. this past summer she fulfilled her dream, representing the usa in beijing and becoming the first american to make it to the quarterfinals in olympic competition. as of september, she was ranked #1 in north america and #15 in the world.

pursed lips means it's business time.

i didn't know any of this the first time i met chen. i walked into the club one wednesday night and entered my name with a friendly asian lady who was marking down players for the weekly table tennis tournament. "do you give lessons?". "yes. $100 an hour", the lady replied. "wow. that's a bit steep. are you worth it?". she responded simply, "yes". i told her i'd give it some thought and went in to warm up. it wasn't until after my humiliating debut in which i lost in straight games to a well mannered australian that i learned of her background. the aussie, who incidentally went on to win the tournament thus softening the blow to my ego from my embarrassing loss, pointed to a massive poster hanging on the wall. i hadn't noticed that it was of the friendly asian lady. she was dressed in usa olympic garb and was competing in the beijing olympics. he told me her story. i felt sheepish for questioning the value of her lessons.

chen in her attack position.

since that tournament i have been addicted. i became a card carrying member of chen's club, i take lessons from her underlings (there are a number of teenage asian girls that come to the states for a year to learn english. they are wicked awesome ping pong players and they teach lessons to earn money. they charge quite a bit less than chen. so i take from them. but because they don't speak english, chen stands nearby and offers suggestions. so in a way i get a $100 lesson at a fraction of the cost), and every wednesday night i compete in chen's tournament. typically 14 - 16 people show up. she splits the group into two pools and each competitor plays everyone in his or her respective pool once. the top two from each pool go into a playoff. the runner up takes home a trophy. the winner claims not only a trophy, but also a $60 gift certificate for a haircut from a local salon. so far my best showing is 5-2. that wasn't good enough to make the playoffs. prior to joining the club i considered myself a fairly solid recreational player. since then i've realized i'm quite a ways from turning my childhood goal of going to the olympics into a reality. while i've had some honorable victories, i've had even more noteworthy losses. just to mention a few...

1. i lost to a 5th grader. daniel is a slightly overweight kid with hair like josh groban and grace like chris farley. he was born and raised on the upper west side and is evidence that kids from manhattan do, in fact, grow up more quickly. he asked what i do for work and when i told him i'm in real estate private equity, he quipped, "great industry to be in right now." he's 11. but the kids got my number. when i was getting ready for a lesson he told me how to say "i need to learn how to serve" in chinese, but what he really taught me was, "i think you're beautiful", which must have been a little creepy for my instructor to hear given she is a 16 yr old asian girl. but my personal favorite was the consoling words he offered upon dismantling me 3 games to 1: "don't worry. you'll be as good as me when you're 11".

daniel and i pose for a photo op during our weigh-in just prior to the match.

2. i lost to a 15 year old girl. this loss was perhaps the most frustrating. i beat her the first game and was feeling very confident. i won the first few points in the 2nd game and then she walked around to my side of the table and asked if she could see my paddle. "ooohhhhh" she said as she examined the double-sided pips. "oohh"? what does that mean, i wondered. she walked back to her side of the table and cast a funky spell on her serve; my powers to return proved useless. she went on to win 2 games to 1

3. i lost to a handicap. there's an older gentlemen who shows up to the tournaments on something that looks likes this. he scoots over to his assigned ping pong table, and like a paraplegic moving from a wheelchair to a bed, he shifts himself from his scooter onto a chair positioned at the end of the table. you know where i'm going with this. and the answer is yes. i really did lose to a guy who played me sitting down. am i embarrassed? yes. frankly, i am.

4. i lost to a celebrity. not long ago i was at the club playing when this guy walked in...

judah friedlander from thirty rock.

i didn't want to make a big scene. so in a very smooth way i blurted out "OH MY GOSH. I'M A HUGE FAN OF YOURS!!!" and then i started to cry. he was flattered. we introduced ourselves and then i went back to playing my game. after beating my opponent chen told him to play me. he walked over and said, "it's ryan, right?". "yeah, you're juno?". "no. judah", he replied. sometimes i really am an idiot. it took me three minutes to forget a guy's name to whom just three minutes prior i had gushed of how big a fan i was. he was such a down to earth dude and was more than happy to accommodate one of the asian instructors who requested a picture with him. we played for a while. he has a nasty serve. i couldn't figure it out. so he beat me every time.

these loses taken individually are mostly just embarrassing (except for the one to judah. that was just cool), but collectively they have forced me to become more realistic about my table tennis aspirations. winning chen's wednesday night tournament has become my new olympics. that is unless i have a date with destiny in london come 2012. but either way, i'm just fortunate to have stumbled upon chen's club.