Re: Whaff
Bubba Lual
The London mayor declared at the Beijing Olympics that it was a common misconception table tennis had been invented in China, it was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century and was called whiff-whaff.
The Jaques family claim they were first to codify the game and John Jaques, Mr Jaques' great-grandfather had invented ping-pong years before whiff-whaff, devised by a business rival, was even thought of.
He said: "I stand by my assertion that whiff-whaff and ping-pong are one and the same thing, with the 'whiffs' predating the 'pongs'. Regardless of semantics though, it is a sport of which we should be proud and I look forward to watching it in 2012."
Boris Johnson made a good joke in Beijing a couple of years ago when taking over custody of the Olympics, reminding the Chinese that table tennis, originally called whiff-whaff, was ours before it was theirs.
"The French looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner," he said. "We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff-whaff." In fact table tennis was also called gossima in the early days, and, given that Gossamer is the brand name of a condom, the Mayor of London missed out on an even better joke, perhaps calculating that the Chinese wouldn't get it.
Even before the tables have gone up I know I'll be sorry when they are taken down. I want them to stay forever. In the parks and public spaces of the once great table tennis playing nations of Eastern Europe, and of course in China where the game now thrives, concrete tables are a common sight. We never had such amenities in this country, but it was always easy to get a game because every church hall and boys' club and workers' canteen had a table. Wherever there was a social club there was a table-tennis team. I was mad on the game in the 1950s as was every one I knew. I am still accosted in the street by people I don't recognise who remember the margin by which one of us beat the other in the Manchester and District League in 1956. If they tell me they beat me I dispute it.
Then came the passivities of television, and after that computers, and that was the end not just of table tennis but the social clubs in which we'd played it. Social? What's social? Can you get an app for that?
There are other reasons why the game's popularity faded. It became a sport. The charm of table tennis had always been that everyone believed they could play it. The first world table-tennis champion won his title Boris-like, in an unbuttoned cardigan. This was what pleased my mother about my playing it. Not too much running around in the cold. And that little ball couldn't do anyone any harm. In truth I dislocated my opponent's knee during the first competitive match I played, teasing him with a drop shot of such sweet perfection that he came charging in to collect it and collided with the table, but I didn't dare tell my mother that. I left her with the illusion that I was playing a game my granny could safely play.
Many of us still mourn the passing of the earlier version, played with ponderously slow pimpled bats, and requiring of the players a sort of philosophical detachment, as though there was all the time in the world to win a point, and the musical to and fro of the ball was its own hypnotic pleasure.
Part of the reason so many great players came from what was left of the Austro-Hungarian empire was that table tennis suited their amused and introspective lugubriousness. It was more psychology than sport. We felt one another out, grew to know one another's idiosyncracies, enjoying the witty dialogue of the game, the ping to the pong, the sudden accelerations, the subtle variations of none too violent spin.
Table tennis (also known as ping-pong or whiff-whaff) is a racket sport derived from tennis but distinguished by its playing surface being atop a stationary table, rather than the court on which players stand. Either individually or in teams of two, players take alternating turns returning a light, hollow ball over the table's net onto the opposing half of the court using small rackets until they fail to do so, which results in a point for the opponent. Play is fast, requiring quick reaction and constant attention, and is characterized by an emphasis on spin relative to other ball sports, which can heavily affect the ball's trajectory.
Owed to its small minimum playing area, its ability to be played indoors in all climates, and relative accessibility of equipment, table tennis is enjoyed worldwide not just as a competitive sport, but as a common recreational pastime among players of all levels and ages.
Table tennis is governed by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), founded in 1926, and specifies the official rules in the ITTF handbook.[4] ITTF currently includes 226 member associations worldwide.[5]
The sport originated in Victorian England, where it was played among the upper-class as an after-dinner parlour game.[1][2] It has been suggested that makeshift versions of the game were developed by British military officers in India around the 1860s or 1870s, who brought it back with them.[6] A row of books stood up along the center of the table as a net, two more books served as rackets and were used to continuously hit a golf-ball.[7][8] In 1883, British sporting goods company Slazenger filed a patent for a net for table tennis.[9]
The name "ping-pong" was in wide use before British manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked it in 1901. The name "ping-pong" then came to describe the game played using the rather expensive Jaques's equipment, with other manufacturers calling it table tennis. A similar situation arose in the United States, where Jaques sold the rights to the "ping-pong" name to Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers then enforced its trademark for the term in the 1920s, making the various associations change their names to "table tennis" instead of the more common, but trademarked, term.[10]
The next major innovation was by James W. Gibb, a British table tennis enthusiast, who discovered novelty celluloid balls on a trip to the US in 1901 and found them ideal for the game. This was followed by E.C. Goode who, in 1901, invented the modern version of the racket by fixing a sheet of pimpled, or stippled, rubber to the wooden blade. Table tennis was growing in popularity by 1901 to the extent that tournaments were being organized, books were being written on the subject,[7] and an unofficial world championship was held in 1902. In those early days, the scoring system was the same as in lawn tennis.[11]
Although both a "Table Tennis Association" and a "Ping Pong Association" existed by 1910,[11] a new Table Tennis Association was founded in 1921, and renamed the English Table Tennis Association in 1926.[12] The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) followed in 1926.[1][13] London hosted the first official World Championships in 1926. In 1933, the United States Table Tennis Association, now called USA Table Tennis, was formed.[1][14]
In the 1930s, Edgar Snow commented in Red Star Over China that the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War had a "passion for the English game of table tennis" which he found "bizarre".[15] On the other hand, the popularity of the sport waned in the 1930s Soviet Union, partly because of the promotion of team and military sports, and partly because of a theory that the game had adverse health effects.[16]
In the 1950s, paddles that used a rubber sheet combined with an underlying sponge layer changed the game dramatically,[1] introducing greater spin and speed.[17] These were introduced to Britain by sports goods manufacturer S.W. Hancock Ltd. The use of speed glue beginning in the mid-1980s increased the spin and speed even further, resulting in changes to the equipment to "slow the game down". Table tennis was introduced as an Olympic sport at the Olympics in 1988.[18]
After the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the ITTF instituted several rule changes that were aimed at making table tennis more viable as a televised spectator sport.[20][21] First, the older 38 mm (1.50 in) balls were officially replaced by 40 mm (1.57 in) balls in October 2000.[7][22] This increased the ball's air resistance and effectively slowed down the game. By that time, players had begun increasing the thickness of the fast sponge layer on their paddles, which made the game excessively fast and difficult to watch on television. A few months later, the ITTF changed from a 21-point to an 11-point scoring system (and the serve rotation was reduced from five points to two), effective in September 2001.[7] This was intended to make games more fast-paced and exciting. The ITTF also changed the rules on service to prevent a player from hiding the ball during service, in order to increase the average length of rallies and to reduce the server's advantage, effective in 2002.[23] For the opponent to have time to realize a serve is taking place, the ball must be tossed a minimum of 16 centimetres (6.3 in) in the air. The ITTF states that all events after July 2014 are played with a new poly material ball.[24][25]
The 40 mm ball was introduced after the end of the 2000 Summer Olympics; previously a 38 mm ball was standard.[22] This created some controversies. Vladimir Samsonov, the World No. 1 table tennis professional at the time, threatened to pull out of the World Cup, which was scheduled to debut the new regulation ball on 12 October 2000.[27]
The table is 2.74 m (9.0 ft) long, 1.525 m (5.0 ft) wide, and 76 cm (2.5 ft) high with any continuous material so long as the table yields a uniform bounce of about 23 cm (9.1 in) when a standard ball is dropped onto it from a height of 30 cm (11.8 in), or about 77%.[28][29] The table or playing surface is uniformly dark colored and matte, divided into two halves by a net at 15.25 cm (6.0 in) in height. The ITTF approves only wooden tables or their derivates. Concrete tables with a steel net or a solid concrete partition are sometimes available in outside public spaces, such as parks.[30]
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