Introduction

The purpose of the following pages is to teach you—by words and photographs —how to play championship table tennis.

Of course, not everyone can be a champion, nor does everyone wish to be. However, increased proficiency at a sport almost always means added enjoyment for the participants, and it is quite simple to learn the few rules and basic scientific principles involved in table tennis which will make you a skilled player. This book was called into being because of the author's discovery, during thousands of table-tennis exhibitions in schools and colleges throughout the country, that very few of the millions of devotees of the sport know anything at all about playing table tennis as it must be played for maximum enjoyment and efficiency.

With practice and study of the rules and principles of the game, the average person can become fairly proficient at table tennis. It is a much simpler game to learn than lawn tennis because the playing surface is com­paratively small. The game does not require perfect vision; in fact, constant use of the eye muscles in table tennis will strengthen them and improve your sight. And the equipment required is simple and inexpensive.

There is no "correct" way to play table tennis. There is no single type of stroke which must be utilized in order to succeed. But there are certain scientific principles which must be applied if the player is ever to become an expert. The principles and methods presented in this book have been deduced through extensive trial and error. The author has taken hundreds of action movie shots of the best players of the game in order to study their various strokes. He has analyzed matches in America and in Europe, and has discovered that, while each of the great players has certain peculiarities of stroking and technique, all of them conform to certain fundamental rules, whether or not they are aware of them.

It is the object of this volume to clarify these fundamentals of table tennis technique so that the reader may reduce his own period of trial and error to an absolute minimum, and may thereby hasten his development as a table tennis expert.

Douglas Cartland (the author) versus his exhibition partner, Martin Reis-man, in Turin, Italy, during their exhibition tour with the fabulous Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, summer of 1951.

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