Thanksgiving. Ah, again, a hopeful gathering time for all to benefit from President Richard Lee’s 8th NATT Stiga-sponsored North American Team Championships. Contributors to the harvest? Start with Tournament Director Fong Hsu (software mentor, overseer of 140 Stiga Expert Tables and certainly an Optimum number of unboxed balls). Then include Tournament Director Wendy Troy whose 190 very diverse teams have the usual eclectic names—Diamonds International (Team rating: 3226); Hard Bats and Balls; Knuckleface Jones!; What Would Bollo Do?; Someone Sponsor Us (Team rating: 5578); Three Jews and a Vegan; Fahoogwogads; and (Blimey!) UK Royal Navy (A, B, and C, all 3 English teams looking spiffy in Stiga outfits).

As for sponsors, could you find one with a better attitude than Pilgrim-like Pioneer Mitch Rothfleisch (13% off, 20% off, 30% off, $200 off—it would seem his Stiga/Banda Specials are Folly indeed). Dave Sakai’s Senoda Printing—they’re such fulfillment specialists they had the NTTA President himself playing on their team—with graphic results. Schlager on their team, too? Nope, this one’s with West and Lane, a sponsoring commercial real estate brokerage firm. Of course Gerflor gives the higher-rated players the red carpet treatment, their Taraflex floor—firm footing there, as with State Mortgage. Finally there’s seafood at Phillips’s Harbor restaurant where whatever’s fishy (“You’ve played great, now eat great”) can be napkinned off as it were with an added touch from the Designer Fragrance and Cosmetic Co.

So all’s in readiness? The Convention Center’s security is tight, the players aren’t? Since there’s little chance to recoup entry fees and expenses, many here will relax, play for fun. There are of course some money prizes—$1,200 for the winning Women’s Team; much, much more for the Men: $10,000 for 1st, $4,000 for 2nd, $1,600 for 3rd-4th, $650 for 5th-8th (less the $500 entry fee for a 3-man team gives $50 apiece left over for a Fri./Sat. lunch not likely to be indulged in at the Hyatt Regency Tournament Hotel). Awarded too will be the player trophies, dwarfed next to a Division-won Expert table (that in the future will encourage players on a team to represent the same Club?).

The first and foremost entry in this tournament (an archangel named Larry made the Announcement) was the team of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and, playing as well as the others, their close kin, the Holy Ghost. Their Club: Trinity. Their Event: Senior’s. Their Rating: The Best. Their Address: Heaven. Their Phone: Just talk, we’ll listen. Their Entry Fee: We’ll pay on arrival, have faith.

Pay on arrival? That did it—sorry, Larry, write a high-minded editorial; this entry, outdoing, well, almost anything by the Boo’s Brothers, was rejected.

Accepted, and seeded out from the Friday Preliminaries, are the four top-rated teams: (1) New York Athletic Club (Feng Zhe, Zhu Hong Bin, and David Zhuang); (2) Canada 2008 (Zhang Wilson Peng, Bence Csaba, and Pradeeban Peter-Paul); (3) Allstars (Han Xiao, Adam Hugh, and Li Yuxiang; (4) Canada 2006 (Qiang Shen; Homayoun Kamkar-Parsi; and Xavier Therien).

This year’s format to decide the Prize-Money Winners is the same as last year’s. To begin, the teams in the16 Preliminary Groups are carefully arranged by top to bottom ratings (an accumulated total of their 3 best player-ratings) via a snake system folding back on itself (the16th and 17th-rated teams are in Group 16 and the 1st, 32nd, and 33rd teams are in Group 1, and so on). The rule of play is that each team tie consists of three members playing, if need be, all three opposing players until one team scores 5 match wins out of a possible 9. When an individual, playing 11-point games, takes three games from his opponent he wins the match.

The 16 Group winners from the Preliminaries join the four exempt teams to form a 20-team Division A. Though other B, C, D…Division play continues as well, I’m concerned here only with those teams who at least theoretically have a chance to win the Championship.

These 20 A teams are then flipped into 4 round robins of 5 teams each (1A, 2A, 3A, 4A)—with each round robin group headed by one of the original four top seeds. From each of these four Division A round robins, two of the five teams advance to single elimination play, thus giving us a quarter’s, semi’s, and final. In the semi’s and final, however, the rule of play changes. Now the three players on a team play not a maximum of 9 matches but a maximum of 5, with the 3rd match played by the player who will play only this one match in the tie. Should the tie go all 5 matches, both of the other two players will play both of their eligible opponents. Now, however, the 11-point games are best 4 out of 7.

For the Prelim upset in Group 11, key into shop.codesociety.com (yes, that’s the 6763-rated team’s title) and you’ll find a bloody site, for though the society 5-2 gunned down the 7048-rated Viet Gang 2, shots spattered everywhere. Wounded only vicariously were Changping Duan and Charlene Xiaoying Liu who sat out this tie while their son Jim dropped two matches, a particularly nasty 13-11 in the 5th one to Anh Tuan Nguyen. (Later, though, Jim will have a good win over Ben Johnson who’s been under Coach Marty Prager’s wing at the Coral Springs Chinese Culture Association Center where they have the largest Chinese library in the country.) Anh shot it out in two more 13-11 in the 5th matches, dying twice—to Stephen Yeh who also beat Steve Nguyen 11-8 in the 5th, and to Napoleon “Rocky” Reyes. Originally from the Philippines, not France, Napoleon, er, Rocky, stopped Nguyen, then Tuan Anh Tran in 5.

The Prelim upset in Group 14 wasn’t much of an upset, since, as happened last year, the Baltimore Brawlers did the manhandling. They 5-1 downed a Quebec team headed by veteran Canadian International Chris Xu. Baltimore star, Trinidad Men’s Champion, 18-year-old Khaleel Asgarali, intent on pursuing a career as a professional player in Europe (he’s been periodically going to the Training Center in Ottawa where he feels he has better opportunities than he would have in the States), was sidelined with a sore shoulder. But his father Nazruddin (“Oscar”) Asgarali, a member of the Trinidad National Team from 1974-89, contributed two wins, an 11-8-in-the-5th close one over Olivier Rieutord. Nigeria-trained Larire (“Larry”) Abbas, also brought home two winners, rallying from down 2-0 to beat Jean-Philippe Gagnon. John Wetzler, splitting matches, saw one slip away when Rieutord 9, 11, 8 came back from a two-game deficit for Quebec’s lone win.

There was also a Prelim upset in Group 16. The Senoda team (Dave Sakai; former World # 88 Ricky Seemiller; and former U.S. Junior Champion Richard Lee) 5-1 downed a Suguru Araki-encouraged, California-based Samurai team—Ferro chemical engineer Kazuhiro Kamada; landscaper Yutaka Takahashi; and pharmaceutical purveyor Hiroyuki Takada. But then, with Seemiller and Lee unarmed, unable to swing without pain (where now were Takada’s Salonpas pain-relieving patches?), and with would-be team mainstays Todd Sweeris out with a bad back and Eric Boggan not free to walk away from his holiday-weekend postal route, the 5-0 bite was the Big Apple 1’s, not the other way round.

A near Prelim upset occurred in Group 8: the Chengdu City Women’s team 5-4 barely beat the Canadian Women. Canada’s Chiu Wennin made a valiant effort with 5-game wins over 18-year-old Sechuan player/coach Fu Shu and 24-year-old Guangzhou player/coach Chen Jiao, but she dropped a 12-10 in the 4th swing match to Tang Wei, a grad student in Public Administration at Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University where the famous Liu Guoliang is majoring in Human Resources Management. Since the best the Yuen sisters, Sara and Stephanie, could do was add a match apiece, Canada fell just short.

In Group 15, the Viet Gang 1 came close to losing to the Budapest Malev Club coached by Laszlo Vargas whose son Zoltan was on their winning team here with Fan Yi Yong and Ferenc Pazsi five years ago. Sponsored in part by Hungarian Airlines, they’re the best team in the Hungarian B League and have with them Danny Schaffer, the Hungarian Cadet Boys Champ.

In the Viet’s 5-4 win, the two tie-deciding matches after Hungary’s Soma Fekete had edged John Thach Tran, 15-13 in the 4th, were Loc Ngo over Istvan Horvath, 11-9 in the 5th, and Tran over Miklos Kekedi, coming from two games behind to win the 3rd at 18-16 and change the course of the tie. Strangely the Hungarian just didn’t seem to care. In the 7th match, at 2-2 in games with Tuan Le, Horvath says he has a cramp and can’t continue. Hence the Malev Club players will go into Division B where they will eventually win an Expert table and very likely not ship it back to Budapest.

Among advancers, another New York team, Big Apple, won 5-3 over Canada 2016. De Tran brought in two wins; former Iranian National Junior Champion Moshen Javaheri one; and Tahl Leibovitz two, though, having been down 2-0 to Derek Wang, had he lost that match, and his team been 4-4, they might have, gulp, regretted their choice of names. Tahl singled out Coach Javaheri as helping the team pull together when it most counted.

The Alex Aponte Yasah team beat the Pushkin team 5-3—with Simon Shtofmakher winning from Yasah’s Nick Snider the only closely contested match. Simon and wife Irina at the Masters Games in Edmonton in July did quite well for themselves—Irina won the Women’s and with Simon the Mixed 45’s, and Simon was runner-up in the 55’s. Yasah, Aponte tells me, is an exclamatory word meaning “That’s it—Hooray!” Pushkin refers to Svetlana Panich’s favorite Russian poet. Her teammate, Michael Henry, she says, is a live ringer for him.

Puerto Rico 5-2 downed the Scarborough Kings Cobras while Scarborough Coach Leung Ting Wing wished the two swing matches—Juan Revelles over Desmond Wilson, 8 in the 5th; and Hector Berrios over Colin Greenidge, 7 in the 5th could have been reversed.

The California J-Leaguers (J for Japanese?) had no trouble advancing over the Punishers, but Shawn Embleton had an 11-9 in the 5th win over Takayasu Nakata. Earlier, in the Punisher’s advance after being 3-1 down to the Stiga Cadet team, John Bauer had two key wins.

John Leach’s TTT team was upset 5-4 by the Trinidad and Tobago Youth team, and John himself wasn’t too happy about losing to the Northern California players Auria Malek, 9, 17, -1, -9, -9 and then Avishy Schmidt, 12-10 in the 5th, again after leading 2-0. Was it John or another youthful player who, wanting some World Championship magic to rub off on him, was so disappointed with a loss as to throw his racket into a trash bin? Anyway, when later he had a change of heart and dug up the offending racket it was covered with Chinese food.

Among non-advancing teams, Penn State 1 (with longtime attendees Hank McCoullum, Ron Lily, Larry Thoman, and Dick Hicks who’s kept a record-book of his individual Team performance since 1957) 5-4 edged the Texas team of Randy Hou, Rick Mueller, and Liu Li Feng.

Another non-advancing team, Mixed Age, fell 5-4 to Three Jews and a Vegan. The Vegan was late arrival Chris Lehman who’d committed to running not one of his 50-mile races but a mere 5-mile one Saturday as a warm-up for his t.t. play that evening. Chris’s teammate Marius Wechsler with 3 wins led the Jews, though not into the Promised 20-team Division A. Peter Li, just turned 12, beat Larry Bavly and Dave Rosenzweig. Bavly, however, nixed the Mixed with 5-game wins over Raghu Nadmichettu and Vladimir Poradich.

Though losing 5-2, the Mixed gave the Texas Wesleyan University team some uneasy moments—for Poradich downed Dinko Kranjac and forced Carlos Chiu into a 12-12 in the 5th anybody’s match; Raghu scored in 5 over Chiu; and Ludovico Gombos, down 2-0 and down 9-8 in the 5th, was fortunate to eke out a win over the sensational pre-teen Li.

Division 1A couldn’t have been more predictable with the N.Y. Athletic Club routing all four opponents 5-0. Texas Wesleyan, cheered on inimitably by Andre Scott, came second, winning all its other ties 5-1. The only 5-2 tie in the whole Division was Puerto Rico over Yasah with the exciting matches split—Aponte over Revelles 14-12 in the 5th, and Abner Colon over Yosmely Vadillo 12-10 in the 5th. Chopper Colon’s winning finish over lefty attacker Vadillo, former Cuban National Champion, was particularly exciting. It featured a penultimate, followed by a final, surprise when, first, Colon, far back, unexpectedly countered in a winner, then scored on a serve and blindingly fast off-the-bounce follow.

Division 1B saw Canada 2008 win all matches but one, as Auria Malek had an encouraging win over Bence Csaba. In another tie, against Csaba, Leibovitz did his bit—went from two games up to (-2, -2, -7) 22 points down, groaned, “I am really disabled.” Tahl’s Big Apple took the Avishy Schmidt team (they were minus Whitney Ping who someone said had hurt her ankle), giving up only the De Tran match to Samson Dubina. Both De and Paul David, who says he’s going to play a series of international tournaments for Guyana, rallied from 2-0 down to (“So bad. So bad.”) darken Auria’s morning opener—Paul alert to calling a match-turning “Time Out” when down 7-3 in the 5th.

The Women’s Division winner, Newgy Robo Women (an attractive? unattractive? name), upset the Big Apple. Countering Alex Perez’s dominating matches, all three women—Californian Crystal Huang who just became a U.S. citizen, Tawny Banh, and Lily Yip—did in Tahl who’d complained earlier (and probably later after losing an 11-0 game to Tawny) that he’d had a bicycle accident and hurt his back. De Tran did manage to beat Huang in 5, but who could blame him if, in losing to Lily and Tawny, he continued to be distracted by his striking, statuesque wife Jennifer at courtside.

Turns out the Robo Women were all too human though, for they lost the tie they needed to advance to the quarter’s. The Schmidt team was the spoiler—with Samson doing heavy duty in winning 3, and Avishy not only beating Yip (whose 8th-match heroics then kept her team alive), but taking the 9th match from Huang 11-9 in the 4th, 11-7 in the 5th. This result brought a 3-way 2-2 tie easily broken in the Big Apple’s favor.

New Jersey didn’t win any ties but, even without wanted teammates Dickie Fleisher and Ashu Jain, they had some fun moments. Eyal Adini played Avishy a re-match—last time they’d met was in an Israeli League 29 years ago. Avishy had to have made some constructive changes in the interim because (1) on finishing that League match with Adini he’d deliberately broken his racket, and (2) having just been in Israel visiting his 80-year-old mother, his memory batteries had been recharged, and, aha, here in Baltimore he beat Eyal in 5. At another table, practicing a mild form of kickboxing, refusing to heed a Time Out called by his coach Adini, and alternately cursing and kissing the net (while an off-duty umpire dryly quipped and chuckled), Barry Dattel suffered through an 11-9 in the 5th win over De Tran.

As husband Dattel and wife Lily Yip were ready to play against one another, Barry shared with daughter Judy his peppy advice to self, “Kill Mommy.” Mommy, however, who’d encouraged Judy at a Hyatt buffet to have not only orange juice but the complementary champagne (“It’s good for you”), was very much alive and well after their match and could be seen in an off-court amorous embrace with her now most ardent supporter. As for Judy’s grown-up mimosa moment—that was frivolity itself compared to the maturity she showed in her confidence-building 11-8-in-the-5th upset over perennial U.S. Team member Tawny Banh. Teammate Wally Green might have sipped a little something, ‘cause on the one hand he was complaining of jet lag after hurrying back from the German and Swedish Opens, two of nine International Pro Tours he’s entered this season (and one of nine in which he’s been seen on TV), while on the other hand he always seemed to me very much awake out there at the tables inexhaustibly playing matches or practicing.

The California G Unit (Keith Alban, Ben Johnson, and Barney Reed) had advanced into Division play without losing a match. Barney had been taken into the 5th by young Preston Chin, but that was o.k.—he was cool, “layin’ low,” he said, “just below the radar.” Barney had won the MVP Award in Shashin Shodhan’s 6-team Bay Area league, but lamented the fact that for those in the age bracket 22-40 there wasn’t anything being done to motivate them to continue playing.

So maybe he wouldn’t continue playing? As I’d heard repeatedly, and even now reluctantly hush-hush tell you “Off the record,” Barney, preparing to play another tie but not yet in court, appeared on screen in his notorious “T.T. Bad Boy” manner and was soon being interviewed both at the Convention Center and elsewhere. It wasn’t clear to many, but the fact that he was wearing a Hennessy shirt to warm-up in suggested to some that he might have been obliging a sponsor—that is, being filmed with a small nip in private of something other than Gatorade—and that this was frowned on by Convention Security. But such a thought surely went up in smoke, because we all know he couldn’t be stupid enough to impair his play, or let his Team’s chances for at least $650 quarter’s money, go to pot. Nevertheless he disappeared for a while before returning to beat Allstar Li Yuxiang.

Ah, but the damage had been done….What’s that, you want me to put it more clearly? Oh, alright, for allegedly smoking marijuana, Barney was taken away from the Center, spent a night in jail while USATT President Sheri Pittman with considerate phone calls was doing her best to look after him. Of course there would be the inevitable repercussions. For without Barney, and undermined psychologically, this Unit lost their chance for advancement—were defeated by Canada’s Juniors 5-2. Pierre-Luc Hinse beat both Keith Alban, whom someone described as a t.t. mercenary (have racket; will play for pay) and Ben Johnson who, probably feeling a win just wasn’t in the cards, also lost to Canadian Junior Champion Guo Peng whose focus is now primarily on school.

Hinse, 18, is aiming to try for a career in table tennis, and will train in France at their National Center that produced this year’s European Junior Team Champions. They have two or three coaches there covering every training session, and though as an “outsider” Pierre-Luc (who also had a win in the Allstar tie over Adam Hugh) will have to learn a lot by himself, he feels it’s a great opportunity. Steve Berger’s Apple 1 team didn’t win a match, but Steve himself with his Golden Age hard bat did well to go 5 with Hinse’s teammates, Guo and Paulo Chira (whom he lost to 11-9 in both the 4th and 5th games).

Canada 2006, as expected, came first in Division 1D, with only one loss—when New York’s Shao Yu rallied from 2-0 down to beat (15-year-old?) Qiang Shen, current Canadian Doubles Champ with Chira. Qiang, who came to Canada from China a year and a half ago, has a perplexingly cool, no stress demeanor.

Shao’s underrated N.Y. TTC team 5-2 stopped the Chengdu City Women (they weren’t quite comfortable playing men?) and 5-3 upset Professor Sugaru Araki’s Sendai Tohoku Fukushi University team. Against the Japanese, Shao was in three-match control. Pan Lin lost 11-9 in the 4th to Tatsuya Honda, but had a crucial 13-11 in the 5th win over Takayasu Nakata who, in an 11-9 in the 4th, 11-9 in the 5th tester, had escaped Kim Bong Geun. However, Kim, a Nursing major at Georgia Perimeter College who enjoys teaching kids in Atlanta, had no trouble downing Honda in the conclusive 8th match.

Canada 2006 defeated the Big Apple, 5-1. But that 1 to Tahl Leibovitz, laying claim to “Who’s the best on the Team now!” was gratifyingly important. Thanks to his coach, Dr. Javaheri who, in conjunction with The NYC Hospital for Special Surgery, is currently studying the strokes used in table tennis with the aim of decreasing the chance for injury, Leibovitz kept his cool. In his and the Apple’s one win over Homayoun Kamkar-Parsi, it wasn’t Tahl’s up or down cries that drew a yellow card, it was, viewed from a restrictive official eye, an in-your-face attitude, not with a finger but a sweaty hand thrust (and a common enough YAAAH!) at his “It-didn’t bother me” opponent. Paul David also played a strong but losing 12-14-in-the- 4th match against Kamkar-Parsi. Paul got a bad break that last game, for when he was leading 12-11, a topspin exchange brought him a ball that unaccountably failed to bounce and he couldn’t return it.

Canada 2008 blitzed New York 1, 5-0. Shao Yu waged a –7, -8, 9, -9 stubborn fight against Peter-Paul—but the rest of his outmatched team finished –6, -6, -2; -7, -4, -4; -2, -4, -2; -4, -4, -7.

The Allstars downed Texas Wesleyan, the Collegiate winners, 5-1. Talk about college table tennis on the rise, and you certainly gotta think Eric Owens. Captain/Coach Keith Evans, taking over for Christian Lillieroos, when asked if his team could win, said “The ball is round”—meaning everyone has to adapt to the same playing conditions and of course to the force, Chance. But it would be unthinkable not to play Owens. Alas, however, poor Eric had a bad case of (Tex-Mex?) food poisoning, and, after a night of throwing up, thought he was about to pass out playing Adam Hugh.

Still, the ball is round, and, though Eric loses 11-9 in the 5th to Adam, he does beat Han Xiao. Adam, roaring CHOU! every winning point, also defeats lefty Ludovico Gombos, after being 2-0 down. But it’s Coach Li Yuxiang, perpetually exhorting himself with emanations totally foreign to me, who captures the spectators’ imagination. With the Allstars up 4-1, Li, having won the 4th at 9, is in the end-game 5th with Carlos Chiu. Up 9-8, Li is quick to see a forehand opening: 10-8. Then, after again failing to return serve, Li forces Chiu back…and scores with such a perfect drop that, bending in exaggeration (can Carlos get to it?), he turns away from the table knowing Carlos can’t get to it. Then, smiling, extending his hand, he makes a little bow to Chiu.

Canada 2008 also had a one-sided win—though Csaba gave up a 3rd game to Han (“CHOU!” screams Adam as Han goes up 3-1 in the 4th—which causes Bence, startled, to whirl round to the Allstars bench and say, “Holy [Expletive].” Canada was lucky not to lose another game when former Chinese National Team member Zhang Wilson Peng, in Canada three years now, prevailed over Adam Hugh 11, 11, 12, 5. In their 1st game, Adam leads 10-9, serves with his usual footstamp, so much the subject of controversy years ago with officials and my son Eric, but, ohh, mis-serves. In the 2nd, Adam’s up 10-8, but Wilson with a superb winner ties it up and, when Adam fails to return serve, goes on to take a 2-up lead. In the 3rd, Adam’s up 10-4 and, without calling “Time!” loses 1-2-3-4-5-6 points in a row before just a little late he leads 11-10. At 11-all, he makes a gorgeous counter, then watches helplessly as Zhang gets a tying net. Eventually, Wilson bangs in a crushing forehand to win that game too from Adam.

Li Yuxiang, former Chinese National Champion and former World Senior Champion in Singles and Doubles, who will be the Director of the Eastern Regional Training Center at his Flushing, N.Y. International Club, again got the crowd involved. Fiftyish he may be, but he shows energy and humor. Peter-Paul’s a good lobber, but he’s sometimes a foil to Liu’s Ma Lin-like drops which the aging but energetic showman smilingly hams up for comic effect. After Li, up 10-8, loses 12-10 in the 4th, a kid comes up to him, says admiringly, “Good game! Good game!” It’s that kind of involvement spectators crave for their $15 admission fee.

1st Match: 30-year-old penholder Feng Zhe over Bence Csaba. Feng’s from China of course but played for Bulgaria at the Shanghai World’s where he was beaten in the 16th’s by semifinalist Michael Maze. Csaba, now out of his teens, is based at the Austrian Association’s Training Center and playing in an Austrian league Sept. to May, then goes to school during the summer. He has a repertoire of strokes, including a counter-looping forehand and backhand, and, fast moving, is able to stretch for and get back balls. Once (shades of Kreanga) he so surprises Feng with a catapulting backhand that the ball drives Chen back and off-balance to avoid being smacked in the face. Another time, when he rushes in to pick up a drop, his momentum carries him to Feng’s side of the table, where, though he might even be behind Feng, he desperately reverses himself and is in his own backcourt in time to try to swat a return. But, withal, he doesn’t win a game.

2nd Match: Canada’s Zhang Wilson Peng (who I’d heard played some furious practice matches with Johnny Huang in Vancouver) evens the tie by 11-8 in the 6th downing 37-year-old Zhu Hong Bin, also from China, who’d been recruited with Feng by teammate David Zhuang. In this match, each player fights for the forehand advantage—Wilson often swinging ferociously and Zhu smoooothly following through. With games 1-1, Zhu, down 8-3, recovers to 8-all but loses the end-game exchanges. In the 4th, with Wilson ever pointing a finger at Zhu that he’s not to fast-serve him, Zhu again ties up the match. However, in the 5th and 6th games, Zhang gets off to 5-1 leads and it’s too much for the older Chinese to overcome.

3rd Match: Pradeeban Peter-Paul, soon to be a university graduate, and having spent some time in New York practicing with Wang Chen, 8, -6, 5, -7, 4, 8 prevails over 4-time U.S. Champ David Zhuang. It appears, when David’s up 4-1 in the 5th, he’ll break the lose one, win one pattern of the first four games, but then, m’god, he loses 10 straight! And begins the 6th by serving off. Then, strange game, David goes up 6-2 before he’s caught flat-footed, whiffs, decides to call Time, and, from 7-all, loses 11-8.

4th Match: With the favored Zhuang team now in danger of coming up on the short end of the $10,000/$4,000 prize money, Feng Zhe and Zhang go at it with Wilson (whoo! wowie!) blasting unbelievable forehands—at one stage winning 14 out of 16 points. Feng has this high-toss serve in which, before he makes contact, he begins, but only begins, a phantom slice at the ball, as if testing his stroke. No, his game isn’t gone. Following that wipeout, he himself is 8-1 up in the 4th and soon the match is 2-2 even. In the 5th, at 9-all Feng gets back an edge, goes 10-9 up, then is no doubt surprised at how badly Zhang fails to return serve. Wilson goes back to his bench, his Chinese coach hands him a bottle of water, he uncaps it and in disgust slaps the cap to the floor. But back he comes to take the 6th game. Though Feng will win and send the tie into a climactic 5th-match, there’s no loser between these two. Before, when Wilson was 8-1 up in the 3rd, Feng mentally gave up. Gave up the game, that is—for, as World #40, and a stalwart in the German leagues, he’s used to winning, not losing. Indeed, in this 7th and last game, after some great off-the-bounce exchanges, when Feng scores his 10-7 point, he’s so thinking WIN that he starts round the table to shake hands.

5th Match: The gathering crowd for this deciding Zhu vs. Csaba match is very pro-Canadian. Csaba takes the 1st game, but Zhu finishes the 2nd with a fearless serve and follow. In the 3rd, Bence, who sometimes seems from a squat position to have an overhead forehand, or, like Timo Boll, to get in a lot of cramped forehands, is 10-8 near a win. The fast-paced play reminds me of the great Japanese player/coach Ogimura’s famous dictum, “You mustn’t think, you don’t have time.” But suddenly Bence lapses—first he mis-serves, then he serves badly, long, and Zhu loops in a winner. Now, though, there’s a flurry of high quality, gutsy, perhaps 2850-level points from which Bence emerges with a 16-14 win.

“You’re the man, Bence!”—and up 10-4 in the 4th he sure is. Then, ahead 10-6 in the 5th, how can he be stopped? Only by his own coach. When Zhu gets 2 points in a row, the score’s 10-8 and it’s time for Time, and for the audience to give encouraging claps and strains of song for Bence. Then, arm outstretched in triumph, Csaba completes his breakthrough match. He has raised his level of play and, pumped up, seems never to tire of shaking hands with ever appearing, adulating courtsiders.

: (Cynthia Paulin, Tang Qi, Marie-Andreee Levesque, Emmanuelle Lavoie) d. (Charles Jackson, Rodney Linn Peffer, James Martin II, Ivar De Jong), 5-2.

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