Wiregrass Table Tennis Club

What is a local table tennis club in small-town America really like? As it turns out, remarkably familiar.

After moving to Alabama, I joined the Wiregrass Table Tennis Club expecting to discover a completely different table tennis culture. Instead, I met a cast of unforgettable characters: an explosive club champion, an enthusiastic founder who had transformed from a rusty amateur into a club president, and a collection of eccentric players whose habits, rivalries, and sense of humor felt strangely universal.

Filled with colorful personalities and affectionate observations, this true story reveals that no matter which country you call home, table tennis people are, in the end, wonderfully alike.

A Serious Player

When I played table tennis at Peters' house in 2000, I was told that although Dothan, where I was staying, did not have a table tennis club, there were a few people around who could play.

Before long, one of them contacted me by email and invited me to practice. Right from the start, he proudly declared, "I am not a hobby player. I am a serious player."

I remember thinking, This is so American.

When I arrived at the gym where we had arranged to meet, I found a table tennis table set up in front of the vending machines in the lobby.

Well, it's better than nothing, I thought, and waited.

A few minutes later, a man came huffing and puffing toward me—so overweight that he looked like the last person in the world who could possibly play table tennis.

This was Warren K. McNeil.

After exchanging greetings, we prepared to start practicing.

Then he said:

"I don't have any balls."

Could such a thing really happen?

With no other choice, we went to the gym office, where I bought some strange, unbranded, cream-colored balls that looked more like children's toys than table tennis equipment. They bounced unpredictably and were even softer than the old Japanese soft balls used in recreational play.

Somehow, we managed to start playing.

But this man was supposedly a chopper—and yet he couldn't even put a chop on the table. In fact, he couldn't even push the ball consistently. It was impossible to have a proper match.

When we talked, I discovered the reason.

"I haven't played table tennis in six years," he said.

Now that was a serious player of a rather unusual kind.