Word: ponging
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...Chinese, and I say to the world, Ping-Pong is coming home.' BORIS JOHNSON, mayor of London, which will host the 2012 Summer Olympics, claiming that Britain invented table tennis...
...think it's funny how Billy Gaines, the founder of Bpong.com says competitive beer pong is not about the alcohol [Aug. 18]. As a college student myself, I know that most students aren't playing to fill their cups with Gatorade. They like the added bonus of getting drunk as part of the competition. Brett Johnson SANTA CRUZ, CALIF...
After my initial excitement, I figured that the table tennis elite must actually whack through their paddles pretty quickly, and maybe needed some sort of pit station for repairing their rubber. But not being a ping pong - sorry, table tennis - aficionado, I asked Bob Fox, team leader for USA Table Tennis, for some help, and found out how wrong I was. "They don't worry about the rubber falling off the paddle," he explained. Fox said the pros apply glue to the paddles and use its tackiness to their advantage. "The effect is one of increasing the speed and spin...
...knew glue could do that? It seems that unlike us basement ping pong champions, table tennis athletes can actually use glue to snap the ball across the table in some pretty astounding ways. Think of slathering your palms with jelly or something equally slippery and then putting your hands together - "that's the springy effect that glue on glue provides," said Fox. Since the 1950s, when table tennis players stopped using hard-backed paddles that consisted of rubber on wood, athletes have been using paddles, or bats, that include a layer of sponge between the paddle and the rubber - anywhere...
...though, is to time the gluing just right. There is a magic moment just before the glue dries when it's hard enough to stick, but still tacky enough to give. That's when players at the Games want to hit the tables. If they don't, it's pong-demonium. "One of our players melted down [in a previous competition] because the match in front of her was delayed," said Fox, "so she thought her glue was losing its effect." Table tennis can be so stressful...