Table Tennis

by Read Listen Learn


The game of tennis that we all know started in England in the 1870s and, by the 1880s, it was already very popular with the British upper classes with both men and women playing. In those days, it was played on grass and, of course, there was no electric light. This meant that on a rainy day or after dark, it was impossible to play.

Soon, someone thought of an indoor game of tennis. The game could be played on a dining table in a large room and used a small, very light ball. This meant that nothing in the room got broken. We don’t really know who started the game but it seems it came from young British army officers in India and South Africa. They spent a lot of their free time in ‘clubs’ drinking and this meant a lot of joking too.

All these young officers knew the game of tennis so someone just made a mini-tennis court on a table. Back in these very early days, the net was a line of books from the club library and books were also used as bats. They used golf balls at first, but these were too heavy and often broke things.

The young men brought the game back to Britain with them and it was soon popular with the rich. Before long, it was popular in the U.S. as well. After just a few years, some companies started to make the equipment and sell it. No more damage to the dining table, no more golf balls flying around, no more books across the table. The bats were made of wood and covered in rubber to help hit the ball better.

Just like in tennis, the game could be for two players or two pairs (i.e. singles or doubles). The correct and usual name was ‘table tennis’ but there were a couple of nicknames as well: at first, ‘wiffwaff’, but later ‘ping pong’ became the most popular name. Both these nicknames were from the sound of the ball, as it was hit backwards and forwards.

By the 1920s, there was an international table tennis club and the rules were fixed as well as the size of the ball, the bats and the table. The game’s low cost and the fact that it was easy to understand made it very popular around the world in homes and clubs. The British took the game to China where it took off and China is still a very strong table tennis country today.

And this may be the reason for the myth that table tennis is Chinese: we see a lot of good Chinese players; and, although the name ‘ping pong’ is from the sound of the ball, it does sound a little like a Chinese word to people who cannot speak that language.

Strangely, the game was actually banned in Russia for a few years because the Russian government believed it could damage the eyesight. This, of course, is not true and the ban ended quite quickly.

The ball we use now was, originally, a ball for little children but an American table tennis manufacturer saw it on sale and knew it would be perfect for the game... but it does have one little problem compared to a golf ball: it’s very easy to break if you sit or stand on it. The advantages of the ball are that it’s very light and cannot really break anything. It’s also important the way the player holds the bat. Just like with knives and forks, there are many different ways of holding the bat and nobody can agree which is the best.

Table tennis is an Olympic sport for men, women and doubles. The Chinese are still the strongest at the sport and won gold in the London Games in 2012.