Ping Pong Ambassador

On the 10th April 1971, a group of 15 American table tennis players, team officials and spouses entered the People’s Republic of China via a bridge from Hong Kong. The American team had been invited (along with the Canadian, British and Colombian teams) to visit China following a chance encounter on a shuttle bus between American Glen Cowan and China’s number one player Zhuang Zedong at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, despite the fact that the Chinese players were under strict orders to avoid all contact with the Americans.

The Americans, after receiving clearance from their embassy in Japan, were the first official visitors to China in over 20 years, since Mao Zedong’s communist revolution in 1949, during which relations between the two countries were marred by Cold War propaganda, trade embargoes and diplomatic silence. The trip created quite a stir in the West, and eventually led to the resumption of relations between the two world superpowers.

The cover of TIME magazine’s 26th April 1971 edition featured a photograph of the American Ping Pong team on the Great Wall of China. Prominent in that now very famous photograph is Guyanese George Braithwaite who had been thrust into a leadership role. Upon the team’s return to the USA, Braithwaite, along with Dave Seemiller, another member of the American team, appeared on the then most popular late night talk show, “The Tonight Show” starring Johnny Carson.

According to an announcement on the USA Table Tennis (USATT) website last week, “The Table Tennis World has lost player extraordinaire George Braithwaite. USA Table Tennis Hall of Famer and former United Nations employee, George Braithwaite, ‘The Chief’, passed away on Monday, 26 October 2020, in New York, after a brief illness.”

So, who was ‘The Chief’, as Braithwaite was referred to, in the table tennis world? Before migrating to the USA in 1959, Braithwaite excelled as a sprinter, representing then British Guiana in the 100 and 200 metres events at two West Indies Track and Field Championships. He also played cricket. In the USA, he landed a job as a statistics clerk, where, in his own words, “I found an old, hard, rubber Ping Pong racket hidden among some documents, discovered the UN Table Tennis club where I quickly became hooked on the game; sacrificing my lunch hour every day to play. I practiced hard and conscientiously.” Eight years after picking up the game, he was selected by the USA Table Tennis Association as a member of the team for Nagoya.

Initially a defensive player, Braithwaite later evolved into one who attacked, utilizing a lot of top spin. His equally strong backhand and forehand allowed him to display excellent control and consistency on the table, and coupled with a magnitude of patience, he developed a style of ‘controlled aggression’ – his term – which simply wore opponents down. His pure love for the game of table tennis, competitiveness and pursuit of fitness allowed Braithwaite to continue to play at an exceptionally high level well into his eighties.

Braithwaite won his first of many titles in 1965 when he captured The Men’s B Consolation at the 1965 Long Island Closed, and by the end of the 1968-69 Season he had risen to number 14 in the USA rankings. After winning the Long Island Open in 1971, he was selected for the Worlds in Nagoya.

Later that year, he represented the land of his birth, at the Central America and Caribbean Table Tennis Championships in Jamaica, where he duelled with the renowned Jamaican player Orville Haslam. It was a great rivalry, with the UK-based Haslam taking the Caribbean title and Braithwaite, the Central American crown. The next year in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana won the Men’s team title, with Canada-based Errol Caetano taking the Men’s Individual event, after teaming up with Braithwaite to take the Men’s Doubles title.

In 1979, at the grand age of 45, a determined Braithwaite finally captured the elusive Caribbean Men’s title, defeating Barbadian Robert Earle, after losing in the 1978 final. Having previously won the Mixed Doubles with Denise Osman, he was able to emulate Bruce Edwards’s feat of winning the three Caribbean titles. (Edwards had won all three in Barbados in 1974). In 1984, Braithwaite, then almost 50, won the very prestigious Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) Open tournament, after

winning the Senior’s title. Later that year, he was named 1984 Olympian magazine’s Sportsman of the Year, and the 1984- 85 USTTA’s Amateur Athlete of the Year. According to the USATT archives, Braithwaite won more than 70 US Open/Closed Championships, and except for 1993 when he didn’t compete, won at least one US Open or Closed title, and often more, for 27 consecutive years.

In a glowing tribute, his archrival, Haslam wrote, “George Braithwaite was an extremely fierce competitor on the green table. He never gave away a point, you had to earn every point against the Chief. His passion for the game was unbelievable. The only way to describe him was as a fanatic who would practice for 6-8 hours nonstop and still feel that was not enough. In my opinion he was a tremendous Ambassador for table tennis throughout the world.”

As we mourn the loss of a son of Guyana, we must remember that George Braithwaite was more than just a champion and a winner of tournaments. His exemplary conduct on the table was a very admired trait, and he was always willing, time permitting, in the words of his good friend Caetano, “to have a knock with anyone, as he later observed, he won’t know how it might help change their game.”