Thursday, July 20, 2006

Ping Pong aka Table Tennis

for once pong has got me sweating like playing Squash...and the room we played last night didn't have any fan and we couldn't find the air-condition switch and remote control, so how? played with the windows slightly open...can't open too big else the ball might fall to the ground floor...btw the room is on the 1st floor. infact it did go down..Gene hit it so accurately the ball went thru the narrow gap in the window...thank god we had spare balls...

Ping Pong aka Table tennis is one of the most popular sports in the world in terms of player numbers, as well as being one of the newest of the major sports.

Pong is a sport where two or four players hit a ball back and forth to each other, with a wooden racket with rubber padding aka bat/pad on a table, in a manner similar to tennis
. The rules are slightly different, but the concept is essentially the same. did you know Pong is an Olympic sport and "ping-pong" is the recreational name, the offficial name is table tennis.

Play is fast and demands possibly the quickest reactions of any sport. A skilled player can impart spin to the ball which makes its bounce difficult to predict or return with confidence. Spin combined with speed makes table tennis an exciting sport to play as well as to watch. The difference between Olympic level play and the average home recreational player is tremendous. Often a proper foundation of table tennis skills is required to understand how competitive players can do what seems impossible to the untrained eye.

The winner is the first to score 11 points, with each player alternating serves every 2 points. At 10-10 (or duece) the players alternate with every serve. The winner is the first person to gain a clear two points advantage over his opponent. The 11 point game is an International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) changed in 2001. The 21 point game is still widely played at recreational level. All games played at national level and at international tournaments are played to 11 points in either a best of five (5) games (preliminaries) or best of seven (7) games format (championship matches).


And did you know Pong is originated from England as an after dinner amusement for upper class victorians in the 1880s, all this while I tot it was from the Chinese since they're the ones doing very well in this game :-). Mimicking the game of tennis in an indoor environment, everyday objects were originally used to act as the equipment. A line of books would be the net, a rounded top of a Champagne cork or knot of string as the ball, and a cigar box lid as the bat.


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