PALO ALTO, California - The ball moves so fast that 27-year-old Yassin Sibai doesn't even look for it. Instead, he focuses on his opponent's hands.
By studying minute changes in posture and flicks of his opponent's wrist, Sibai gauges the spin and direction of the small celluloid ball as it rockets toward him at nearly 100 mph.
While the persistent hollow clack of a Ping-Pong ball hitting the table reminds most Americans of community center rec rooms or lazy, rainy Sundays in Mom and Dad's basement, table tennis is an Olympic sport in which the competition -- particularly in Europe and Asia -- is stiff.
Ping-Pong is a registered trademark of the Parker Brothers corporation and therefore, for official purposes, the sport is called table tennis.
"I call it Ping-Pong," says Dennis Davis, head coach at the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club and former National Coaching Chairman of USA Table Tennis. "Some people would turn their nose up at that, but it's the same thing."
Sibai, a Hayward resident and software engineer, played table tennis competitively on a university team in Lebanon, where he trained several hours a day, three to four times a week. He has played in European national championship games as well.
"I came to the States five years ago and it has been hard to find other professional players," he says. "It's been even harder to find places to play."
Ironically, Sibai is in the right place, at least in terms of the rest of the country. The Bay Area, one of the nation's hot spots for table tennis, has programs in Concord, Palo Alto and San Francisco that rank in the top six clubs in the United States.
Phil Schaefer, founder of the 32-year-old Concord Table Tennis Club, feels Sibai's pain.
"It's one of the sports that's been hidden because it's not getting much national coverage," he says. "We're making efforts to get players to compete on a world level, but the infrastructure's not there. There aren't strong leagues for developing players compared to Europe and Asia."
Making history
The lack of national interest for table tennis in the United States seems strange in light of the sport's historical and diplomatic significance.
In 1971, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai invited the U.S. table tennis team to Peking. That April, 15 American table tennis players and three journalists became the first Americans to set foot on China's soil since Mao Tse-tung took control of the land 22 years earlier.
In what became known as the Ping-Pong Diplomacy, more than two decades of hostility between the United States and China was healed over a friendly game of table tennis. Despite that connection, the sport has yet to gain national popularity in the United States. But the story might be changing.
With more than 150 members, the Concord Table Tennis Club has the largest membership in the Bay Area.
"Our key to success is that we're there all the time," Schaefer says. "There are a number of people who take responsibility for the club's well-being and we're free of elitism. We have a very nourishing atmosphere and we want to develop new players."
While the club's goal is to nuture junior players who eventually will compete in tournaments, Schaefer also notes that the club offers classes, drop-in sessions and tournaments for adults.
"Many players who are in their upper 60s to mid-70s are still quite competitive," he says. "One of the great things about the game is that you can have a match with a 76-year-old and a 10-year-old and you don't know who will win."
At the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club, the focus is primarily on juniors.
"Initially it was depressing because there were no kids," says Davis, describing the club when it was established the early 1990s. "We had to fight to get tables for a juniors program, but within a year we started having really great success."
The club coaches 45 juniors and has produced high-ranking players including Michelle Do, Jackie Lee and Khoa Nguyen, who is competing in the Olympics this year.
Numbers matter
Like Schaefer, Davis' goal is to create a larger pool of players to compete well internationally. It's a daunting task in a country where the sport is barely recognized.
"In China, there are maybe 12 to 14 million registered table tennis players compared to some (5,000) to 7,000 in the U.S.," says Livermore resident Tom Miller, one of only 15 Blue Badge Umpires in the sport. "In the U.S., the first thing you have to do is convince people that it's an athletic activity rather than a social one."
Miller umpired in the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and at Sydney in 2000.
"The Seoul games was the first time table tennis was a medal event," he says. "It's really well supported in Korea; people have a higher understanding of the sport at a national level."
To the unseasoned viewer, subtleties of table tennis are easy to miss.
"Sometimes a player will miss what looks like an easy serve, but it's not," says Davis. "It's a lot like golf. People who really watch are people who have golfed before and understand how unbelievably difficult certain shots can be."
To be competitive in table tennis, a player must understand the physics of the game, particularly the spin of the ball.
"You have to understand what spin is coming to you," says Davis. "Some serves look slow, but there is so much friction on the ball, so much spin, that it will grab the opponent's racquet and go where I want it to go -- not over the net."
Training to become competitive internationally is intense. Players do aerobic training, weight training, lateral jumping and sprinting as well as technical training.
"In table tennis you have to get from point A to point B and back in zero time," says Davis. "There is less physical upper body strength required than there is in tennis, but in table tennis the racquet is moving a lot faster and you have to change direction a lot more."
Technique is key
Technique is even more vital than physique. Understanding the equipment is a key part of playing well. The type of rubber used on the table tennis racquet -- also called a paddle or bat -- affects the revolutions per minute that a player can put on the ball. Smooth or "inverted" rubber, often the red side, provides the greatest amount of top-spin and is used for offensive play. The black side has textured or pimpled rubber, which slows the ball and is used for defensive play.
World-class players can put up to 9,000 rpm of spin on table tennis balls.
"When people first start playing with good equipment, they don't know how to use it and they lose control of the ball," says Davis. "The rubbers can impart unbelievable amounts of spin."
Playing offensively, Sibai tries to get his point in the first two hits of the round. He changes the rubbers on his paddle every few games.
"It can get pretty expensive," he says. "I pay between $100 and $200 for rubbers. I mostly don't keep the rubbers on the wood; I clean off the glue and put the rubber back on for each game."
While upcoming television coverage of table tennis in the 2004 Olympics supposedly will be increased, American lovers of the game still see a long road ahead before their sport gains real recognition at home.
"I would like to see it get more popular," says Schaefer. "It would be good if there were more clubs and more people willing to get involved, but I think everybody (at the club) agrees that without a national hero, it's going to stay underexposed."
