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Equipment: Table Tennis

Table tennis is played with a lightweight ball on a table divided by a net. Players use rackets to hit the ball back and forth until one misses. The International Table Tennis Federation was founded in 1926 and table tennis made its Olympic debut in 1988. Originally an upper-class parlor game in England in the 1880s, table tennis is now a fast-paced international sport played by over 40 million people worldwide, mainly in China. Modern rules stipulate games are played to 11 points, with matches consisting of best-of-three or best-of-five games depending on time constraints.

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63 views2 pages

Equipment: Table Tennis

Table tennis is played with a lightweight ball on a table divided by a net. Players use rackets to hit the ball back and forth until one misses. The International Table Tennis Federation was founded in 1926 and table tennis made its Olympic debut in 1988. Originally an upper-class parlor game in England in the 1880s, table tennis is now a fast-paced international sport played by over 40 million people worldwide, mainly in China. Modern rules stipulate games are played to 11 points, with matches consisting of best-of-three or best-of-five games depending on time constraints.

Uploaded by

Lyka Gonzales
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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TABLE TENNIS

EQUIPMENT 
 Ball: The international rules specify that the game is played with a light 2.7 gram, 40 mm
diameter ball.
 Table: The table is 2.74 m (9 ft) long, 1.52 m (5 ft) wide, and 76 cm (30 inch) high with
a Masonite (a type of hardboard) or similarly manufactured timber, layered with a smooth, low-
friction coating.[20] The table or playing surface is divided into two halves by a 15.25 cm (6 inch)
high net. An ITTF approved table surface must be in a green or blue color. 
 Racket: Players are equipped with a laminated wooden racket covered with rubber on one
or two sides depending on the grip of the player. The official ITTF term is "racket", though "bat" is
common in Britain, and "paddle" in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis

HISTORY 
 The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) was founded in 1926. Table
tennis made its Olympic debut at the 1988 Seoul Games.  
 High society origins: It is thought that upper-class Victorians in England
invented table tennis in the 1880s as a genteel, after-dinner alternative to lawn tennis,
using whatever they could find as equipment. A line of books would often be the net, the
rounded top of a champagne cork would be the ball and occasionally a cigar box lid
would be a racket.
 Modern changes: Table tennis started as a genteel, after-dinner game, but is
now a fast, high-tech sport. It also has the most participants of any sport in the world. The
sport has progressed enormously since it was first invented.  Nowadays, players use
specially developed rubber-coated wooden and carbon-fiber rackets and a lightweight,
hollow celluloid ball. Thanks to their high-tech rackets, they can now smash the ball at
over 150 kilometers per hour! (93 MPH)
 Popular appeal: It is estimated there are 40 million competitive table tennis
players and countless millions playing recreationally making it the sport with the most
participants worldwide. This is largely owing to its enormous popularity in China, which
has become the dominant force in the sport.
TABLE TENNIS RULES
The Game
o   Table Tennis can be played as singles or doubles and involves a game up to 11 points. A
match is the best of any odd number of games (usually 3,5 or 7). This depends on time
constraints. 1 game is also acceptable and time efficient for schools table tennis. Another option to
this is to play by time limit (5 minutes) with the person leading at the end of the time limit the
winner. If scores are level, then the game is won by the first player to get 2 points in front with
serves alternating.

Starting the Game


o   The game commences in one of two ways to see which player will serve first: (a) a toss of a
coin or (b) one player (or the umpire or scorer) hides the ball in one hand below the table; the other
player must then select which hand is holding the ball.

Service
o   Players serve from behind the table to their opponent so that the ball bounces first on their half
of the table and then on their opponent's half of the table. If the service hits the net on the way
over, but is otherwise a successful service then this is termed a "let" service and the server may
have another serve. Service alternates after every two points.

Return of Service
o   The ball must be hit after it has bounced on the receiver's half of the table. The return must be
made straight back over the net, (ie: the ball does not have to bounce on both halves of the table
for the return, but only onto the opponent's half of the table).

Rally
o   The receiver must return the serve by hitting the ball after it has bounced. The ball is then hit
alternately over the net onto the table by each player until one player fails to return the ball. The
ball must be struck before it bounces twice on the table. The rally ends if the ball does not land on
the table or if a player misses the ball, or if a player hits the ball without it bouncing on their side of
the table.

Scoring
o   A point is scored each time a rally is won. A game is won when a player reaches 11 points. If
the players reach 10 points each, then the game is won by the first player to get 2 points in front
with serves alternating. A match is won when one player wins the game in the case of 1 game
being played. In longer matches the first player to win a majority of possible games is the winner
i.e. 2 out of 3, 3 out of 5, 4 out of 7. If playing by time limit, the same rules apply, with the leader at
the time limit winning. If the scores are level, then the game is won by the first player to get to 2
points in front with serves alternating.
o   When scoring, the server's score is always called first.

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