Fast and furious … and fascinating

“For some reason, ping-pong came very natural to me, so I started playing it all the time. I played ping-pong even when I didn’t have anyone to play ping-pong with. The hospital’s people said it made me look like a duck in water, whatever that means.” — Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump I’M not like Forrest Gump. Well, not when it comes to table tennis anyway.

No way could I be called a natural.

I mean, I get the basics. And I dabbled when I was a kid. But even in primary school I was coming from a fair way behind some of my peers.

There was a father-son table tennis competition at a footy team pie night at school when I was in Grade 6. Dad and I entered but the thing I most remember was my inability to serve normally. Instead I was allowed to bounce the ball first and then it hit it over the net.

Dad and I didn’t progress very far, as I recall, but I seem to remember some murmurs of dissatisfaction at my unorthodox style (because even in Grade 6 table tennis someone’s playing for sheep stations). I’m sure if we’d somehow managed to take the chocolates there would have been a protest lodged. This memory came back to me this week after I wandered out into The Arena to watch some preliminary rounds of the 2019 ITTF Australian Open. I came away thinking I’d found my new favourite sport. Some 180 athletes from more than 20 countries will compete at the tournament as much for the half a million dollars in prizemoney as the fact that the Open is seen as crucial in the lead-up to next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games. Among them are multiple world and Olympic champions, giants in the sport like Chinese megastar Ma Long, nicknamed the Flying Dragon, followed by millions on social media and arguably the greatest ever male player in table tennis history.

But it’s not just because of the level of skill on show, the lightning reflexes and amazing saves that I’m fan. It’s the theatrics. I saw none of the histrionics that seem to have become de

rigueur on the world tennis circuit these days; perhaps that's because trying to smash a table tennis racquet (yes, they’re called racquets) would look merely comical rather than aggressive. But there were so many quirks, personality traits and pre-serve rituals to watch.

Rafael Nadal would have felt right at home.