Table Tennis and Weather
We had nearly two inches of snow last night here in Germantown, Maryland, and it's 16 degrees outside. This is is the first snow we've had this winter, and it's by far the coldest. This got me thinking about table tennis and weather - and here's a short list of how weather has affected table tennis!
SNOW - The North American Teams Championships in Baltimore used to be the U.S. Open Team Championships in Detroit. (It moved to Baltimore and was renamed in 1998.) I began playing table tennis in 1976, and started going to the Teams for the first time that November. For the next three years (1976-78) I got a ride up with Jim Mossberg, a ten-hour drive. One of those years we were hit with a snowstorm in Detroit. We planned to drive back starting Sunday night. However, the snowstorm forced us to check into a hotel. The snow kept coming down, and we weren't able to return home until Wednesday. (I did some checking, and there were heavy snows in Detroit in November of 1977 and 1978, so it was one of those years - I think 1977.)
COLD - Players sometimes make the mistake of leaving their racket in the trunk of their car when driving long distances to tournaments. This leaves the sponge cold and dead. At one tournament a player had this problem, but he had a simple solution - he got out a hair dryer and warmed his racket up! (If a cold racket plays dead, wouldn't a very warm on play faster and bouncier? Perhaps players should heat up their rackets before big matches with a hair dryer? I may have just revolutionized the game. Or perhaps umpires and referees will soon be forced to take the temperature of both players' rackets before a match. I've opened a can of worms here.)