Ball of Fury
Inside Chicago’s cut throat world of ping pong
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Striking a pong ball is, at a simple level, an explosion of force. Professional players can strike the ball, weighing 2.7-grams and made of celluloid, at speeds of more than 100 mph. Their opponents usually stand 10 feet away. Intermediate players like Giamalis can strike the ball in the low 70s. At this speed, from the moment of the paddle strike, the ball travels the first 3.5 feet in around 33 milliseconds or 1/9 of the time it takes to blink. Players can’t even see the ball for the first part of the shot. They have to rely on a bit of guesswork. “Anticipation is important,” says Doro Gheorghe, Executive Director of USA Table Tennis. “The best players use it to determine which corner the ball is going to come.”
But even if the player anticipates correctly, they’re still going to have to deal with spin. Pong players like Giamalis are the masters of the Magnus Effect, a physics term that describes why the rotation of the ball affects its movement through the air. The Magnus Effect is the reason why curveballs dip, golf-balls slice, and cannonballs veer.
When Giamalis hits a topspin forehand, his favorite shot, the air moves faster on top of the ball than the bottom. “As this happens,” says Dr. Albert C. Claus, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of physics at Loyola University, “high pressure builds up on the top of the ball, while low pressure builds on the bottom. Since things always move from high pressure to low pressure, the ball, in this case, will curve down.” The direction of the ball will alter again after it hits the tabletop. Depending on the friction and smoothness of its surface, the ball could slow down, pop up or skim. “You have to be prepared,” says Claus with a laugh. The control of spin can make good players great and their opponents look foolish. To fuel this spin, players look for the ultimate paddle. It’s like a small arms race. Even the amateurs playing for the CATTL Cup seek paddle advantages. Giamalis plays with a carbon tube and two rubber dampeners inserted into a hollow area of his paddle handle. The manufacturer claims it reduces vibration and increases power. Others use paddles that mix carbon and Kevlar fibers into their wooden cores.
Giamalis says that he paid around $250 for his paddle, not including the padded case he carries it in. While Giamalis doesn’t re-glue the rubbers of his paddle before matches like the majority of Olympic and professional players do to get a “trampoline effect” on their hits, he cleans it with special, pong-specific cleaning foam to make sure it has plenty of grip. He wants to hold the ball on the face of his paddle for a super-brief moment as he hits it forward to ensure that the spin and the placement of his shots will be on point.
“In the league, I probably have the best and cleanest slams,” he says.
“Easily the highest percentage of my slams is points.” But Giamalis also has a finesse game. It belies his aggressive demeanor and gives the impression that he can be tender, at times. What he really wants isn’t an overpowering crush, but a disgusting, technical serve. “A sick serve helps set up the game,” he says. “You want to be able to have a different serve for the first-third the second-third and the third-third of the table and be able to serve from both sides. Working on that part of my game is a big reason why I play every night at the Village.”
The Happy Village Tavern is the pong bar of Chicago. It brings together generations of players, hosts the half of all the CATTL matches and is a model for how pong can rise up out of the basements like Lazarus in a sweatband and trainers.
“We want more of those types of places,” says Shana Trombley of the Ping
Pong Federation, a Chicago-based organization whose goal is to spread pong as a recreational sport. “You could call it the Happy Village model. They get people together to play and help support a league. It’s absolutely what we want… It’s where I play.”
Happy Village sits on the corner of Thomas and Wolcott. It’s a neighborhood dive off the main streets of Chicago’s West Side. The interior of the place is classic: Budweiser mirrors; neon Corona lights in the windows; a plastic American flag; plastic cigarette trays; floors made of green and white checkerboard linoleum. The bar is long and fits 13 stools comfortably. Sports games and old movies play on two television screens propped up near the ceiling. The back patio is large and verdant and full in the summertime. It has a small fountain that trickles and a long white tent that could have been nicked from a wedding reception to protect drinkers from afternoon showers. A Mexican vendor periodically walks through the place to sell homemade cheese and chicken tamales out of his thermal-lined backpack.
Just beyond the restrooms is where Danny Giamalis spends much of his free time. It’s the pong room, the home of the CATTL Cup tournament, a place that could double as a basement. Pong games heat-up around 8 or 9 p.m. and go until the bar closes at around 2 a.m.. It’s a mix of serious pong veterans and young folks looking for something other than pool. There are two tables in the room, a high-quality one in the center and a smaller one in the back, puncture wounds and wood scrapes cover the top of this table.
It’s where the newbies cut their teeth before moving over to the smooth-surfaced table to play with the more serious pong players.
But a little over two years ago, these tables didn’t exist. The room was a rental space used for parties and dance lessons. It would be the same today, if the owner hadn’t gone on vacation, leaving bartender Louis Stockwell in charge.
“I went behind her back,” recalls Stockwell with a laugh. His eyes light up mischievously behind thick black-framed glasses. He enjoys telling the story of how he brought pong to Happy Village. It makes his ponytail shake. “So the owner took a one week break in 2005,” he says, “and it gave me just enough time to find and buy that old table. I bought it for $300 and put in the center of the room along with several cheap paddles and a few balls. Nothing fancy, just enough to get some games going.”
