TABLE TENNIS HISTORY

 

       Devised as a kind of miniature tennis only toward the end of the last century, table tennis really goes back to the twelfth-century Royal Tennis.  Who first invented table tennis as it is played today is not known nor is the country of its origin quite definite.

       Britain, the United States, as well as India, and South Africa have each been named as the birthplace of this popular sport, but most people concede that it began in England.  Even those who suggest that table tennis was played first in India or South Africa agree that British army officers stationed there were probably responsible for its introduction into those countries.

       The simplicity of its rules and the fact that its equipment was so easily and cheaply obtained has made table tennis a most popular sport enjoyed both by the young and not so young, the man in the street and royalty.

       King George VI had a table installed at Buckingham Palace and, at the outbreak of World War II, provided his daughter with facilities for the game at Balmoral Castle.

       Likewise, the Shah of Persia, Pundit Nehru, and the former King Farouk of Egypt were promoters of table tennis.  Sportsmen of every type found and still find it an excellent way of conditioning themselves for their own individual pursuit.

       This is not surprising, as table tennis combines so many features.  It gives agility to the player, demands good footwork and lightning speed, and promotes faster reflexes.  Altogether, it is a most exhilarating sport.

       Industrial psychologists have stressed the game’s great contribution to higher efficiency in people’s work, having found that after a good game of table tennis they have returned to their task refreshed and with increased energy.

       Table tennis, equally, has been considered a valuable means in attaining a better coordination of the eye and the mind.

       Table tennis began, though not under that name, as a parlor game in Victorian homes.  The equipment used in those early days was mostly improvised and homemade.  The ball was made of string, while books, placed on a table, represented the net.  The racket or bat was cut out of a piece of thick cardboard.

       Early literature on the game advised that the room chosen for it should be sparsely furnished and that such furniture, as there was, should be covered up to avoid wear and tear.

       Commercial interests soon spied a chance of exploiting the new pastime and began to manufacture equipment more suitable than the hitherto homemade variety.  Rivalry between the various firms concerned stimulated the game all the more.

       An American firm, Parker Bros. of Salem, Massachusetts, who manufactured all types of sporting goods, are said to have been one of the first to develop what they called “Indoor Tennis.”  They exported their sets to England, where their British agent, Hamley Bros., of London, first marketed it.

        Meanwhile, other English companies had registered their own patents, such as Ayres Ltd. (who advertised the sport as “The Miniature Indoor Lawn Tennis Game”) and Charles Barker of Gloucestershire.

       The balls supplied then were either of rubber or cork and frequently were covered with knitted web or a piece of cloth to prevent damage to furniture and give a spin to the ball.

Bats still continued to be of various shapes and materials and, in fact, they have never been standardized.  Their handles were exceedingly long and their blades, which we hollow, were covered with parchment or leather, giving them the appearance of small drums.

       Sometimes the net was stretched across the table between the backs of two chairs.  A game was completed when one of the players scored twenty-one points, a rule that has never been changed. (Until Sept 1, 2001, with games now to 11 points)

       It was the introduction of the hollow, celluloid ball that completely revolutionized the game, giving it new impetus, extraordinary speed, and split-second precision.

       Tradition relates that a player named James Gibb, on a visit to the United States, had come across such colored balls, used by children as toys.  On his return to Britain, he tried them out at table tennis and discovered their great advantage.  He lost no time in telling a business acquaintance who dealt in sporting goods about them who, realizing at once their great potentialities, began to sell them.  Inevitably, the innovation further boosted the game.

       Business competition was vigorous, and the various firms patented their particular set of equipment.  Among the names chosen were such fancy descriptions as Gossima, Whiff Whaff, and Flim Flam.  Parker Bros. adopted the trade name Ping-Pong.

       In fact this was the second time that a sport was called onomatopoetically.  The name “ping pong” imitated the two sounds the ball made: when the racket hit the ball, the sound was a ping; then, when the ball hit the table, it was a pong.

       In no time it took people’s fancy, and Ping-Pong became a real craze, both in America and Britain as well as other countries.  Every home that wished to keep up with the Joneses, as it were, contained facilities for the sport.  Not everyone, however, approved of the fad and some newspapers of the time regretted men as much as on women as a sign of decadence.

       After some time, as always happens to sudden fads, people tired of Ping-Pong, Whiff Whaff, or by whatever name it was called.  It went into decline until one day a man named E. C. Goode gave the game a new lease on life.

       According to the story told at the time, the sudden surge of interest in table tennis was due to a headache suffered by Goode, who had not yet lost the love of the game.  Searching for a remedy for his pain, he had gone to a chemist and, when paying for whatever drug he had purchased, he noticed a studded rubber cash-mat on the shop counter.  The thought came to him that it would make an ideal surface for a Ping-Pong bat, as it should give the player much greater control over the ball.  His headache forgotten, he bought the mat from the chemist and, trimming it to the right proportions, glued it to a Ping-Pong bat.

       He lost no time in starting to practice and soon proved the vast superiority of his improved implement with which he became so efficient that at the national final he challenged the English table tennis champion and was able, through the novel bat alone, to beat him by fifty games to three!

       From that day onward, Ping-Pong never looked back.  Aristocrats and the people took it up again with new verve.  Private tournaments as well as public contests became the vogue and countries all over Europe joined enthusiastically in the sport.  Well-known players took due advantage of the revolutionary bat with its fascinating ball control by introducing many new techniques that gave the game a totally different appearance.

       Once again, however, table tennis lost its appeal—around 1904—and did not revive till after World War I when, in 1921, the Ping-Pong Association was established in Britain.  Realizing that a commercially parented name was being used, it was changed in the following year to the Table Tennis Association.

       The Hon. Ivor Montagu, a son of Lady Swaythling, then studying at Oxford University, became a table tennis enthusiast.  Other undergraduates caught the fever and joined in lively contests.  Soon the first inter-Varsity match, Oxford vs. Cambridge, was played.

       It was through Ivor Montagu’s initiative that his mother donated the Swaythling Cup that, like the Davis Cup in lawn tennis, has become the much coveted and treasured international table tennis trophy.

       A world congress held in Berlin in 1926 resulted in the foundation of the International Table Tennis Federation that, by 1939, included more than thirty nations with England still leading, having 260 leagues with almost 3000 clubs.  At long last the game’s rules and equipment were standardized.

       Britain did not retain the prime position she had held in the game.  Other nations began to catch up and even surpassed her, particularly the Americans and Czechs but most of all, the Hungarians who, on many occasions, became world champions.   

 

From, How Did Sports Begin? R. Brasch, McKay Publishing, 1970