There are some who say that the spinning serve and the overpowering fast loop behind it have made the game more exciting than it was in Miles' and Reisman's day when there were those enduring marathons, slower volleys, and endless chances for strategic play. But the last tournament I went to, in Miami, had a bare fifty spectators, whereas I'm told that bleachers were packed thirty years ago under the magic spell of the masters of the game.
Still, Stellan is far superior to the greats of yesteryear. So what has been lost?
Maybe the mystery lies in the hard rubber bat, and the graceful cat-like movements of Marty Reisman. Why else, to use an analogy, would Muhammad Ali be loved over Joe Frazier, the boxing equivalent of the hard-working, technical, and thoroughly efficient modern table tennis player?
When I met them, the Swedish players were not studying the mathematics of the game for nothing, all the while calming their fears of losing with modern rituals, and becoming more predictable with every weight-lifting exercise.The anti-topspin racket, too, devilishly aimed at eliminating the danger of losing while trying not to pay the dues, symbolizes the new logic of table tennis.
The sport has succumbed to the apocalyptic dreams of a Dr. Spock child of suburbia, refusing to suffer the slow, gradual trials and errors of growing up, but wanting instead instant maturity.
The inverted sponge has satisfied this technological need--as real as the need for color TVs and streamlined plastic cars which are dead in a year but "sexy" while they last. It has become almost impossible for a Joe Namath to exist in table tennis with robots spreading their metallic disease like cancer around the globe.
What charisma can survive the dull predictability of the machine? Could it be that one's very being today incorporates the oscillation and senseless, electric hum? Yes, the sensuality of the game has been lost to the silent thud of the sponge--whereas thirty years ago, the crack of confrontation with the rubber bat excited audiences.
Now the battle lines have been blurred, the struggle of an expedite match has been lost to the ferocious whippings of a fast loop, as inevitable and omnipotent as our hi-rise buildings. The essence of the game now is speed--with the third ball attack as its image. The long skillful maneuvers of a hotly contested match have evolved into the rushing impatience and quick movements of an athlete racing the clock of his mind towards the tape, nervously aware that a split second could tell the winner.
No wonder the game has lost its appeal--the fans have already been through the rush hour traffic jam going to and from work, why shouldn't they prefer a good movie at home to those painful reminders that table tennis brings of their fast-paced world?
These thoughts and others entered my mind as I yawned with boredom at watching the world champion play in Lapland. It wasn't that he was any less of a great player than I thought, but that his strategy never varied--the serve, loop, and kill were easily executed with an unbelievable consistency and technique that were anathema to the senses. He has trained his body as seriously as any astronaut, but his title would vanish without his space weapon, the Stellan Bengtsson Mark V bat.
There could be no tragedy in his style resembling the moral suffering of a Marty Reisman who has remained faithful to the sensual style of the game despite technological inventions. Once an anti-Stellan Bengtsson Mark V bat is developed, what will Stellan do then? Will he finally see his own absurdity and revert to rubber, or will he continue his false struggle to combat technology with better technology?
Whatever happens, the personal aura of Marty Reisman remains, and the memory of the game's one-time greatness with the spectators does too. Are they not in the end to judge a player's worth with their thumbs up or down?