Ping Pong and Pool: One Table

Ping pong isn’t our exclusive competition. My first cousin and me were always combative… perchance too combative. It might be as little as who might consume food faster or just plain consume more… whom could eat slower or in smaller amounts. It didn’t matter. If there was a means one person could outperform the other in something, we’d compete.

Regrettably, the small home my wife and I purchased doesn’t have a lot of space for the many means my cousin and I desire to compete. After much calculation, my wife and I at long last set on a billiard table with a table tennis conversion top. Basically this provides us the capacity to enjoy either pool or ping pong on one table in the same space.

So now my cousin and my infamous competition proceeds. Of course, he incessantly kvetches that it isn’t the true thing. Even though he normally bests me in pocket billiards, each instance we place the table tennis conversion top along the billiard table, it seems his game errs.

To put it simply, I think it’s because I am just plain the better table tennis player. But unfortunately, he makes too many rationalizations. The height isn’t correct. The proportions are off. The list proceeds on. So I got out the measuring tape. The height and proportions were right on to the official table tennis dimensions. Then he claimed the table caused the incorrect bounce; that somehow the billiard table beneath affected the velocity and height of the ball bounce.

So we researched the official bounce measurement (yes, there is an official bounce measurement). It’s for each 30 cm of drop, there must be a 23 cm bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen locations on the conversion top. In every last spot the ball bounced virtually perfectly straight up and nearly exactly 23 cm high. So you see, table tennis conversion tops do a perfectly respectable job replicating a good game of table tennis. And my cousin has no excuses. I am simply the greater table tennis player.

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