Sweating Through The Existential Angst Of A Las Vegas Table Tennis Tournament

LAS VEGAS — From July 3-13, World Table Tennis staged a Grand Smash tournament in Las Vegas for the first time. Like the Grand Slams of tennis, the Grand Smashes sit atop WTT’s tournament hierarchy, and with $1.55 million in prizes and main draws of 64 top players, the Smash was the largest international table tennis event to take place in the United States.

Vegas is no stranger to big table tennis tournaments. The city often plays host to the U.S. Open, which is run by USA Table Tennis and features a handful of pros competing side by side with hundreds of amateurs. American players who have been to previous U.S. Opens arrived at the Grand Smash already familiar with the little hells that a tournament in Vegas can produce: blast-furnace heat and slot machine-choked hotels on the way to a convention center floor, undergirded by concrete so slick that players pour out drinking water to wet their soles between points. 

WTT set up an impressive single-court, dubbed the “Maverick Arena,” within the 9,500-seat Orleans Arena. Sparklers lined the players’ walkway to the court, and the presence of jumbotrons, strobe lights, smoke machines, and a DJ gave Maverick Arena a gloss worthy of an international competition. You need more than one court to run a tournament like this, though, and most players found themselves elsewhere. Three additional competition tables and a practice hall were packed into a tent in the parking lot, 10 minutes away down long escalators, through security checks, and past two blocks of sweltering asphalt. Lines of harsh lights ran the length of the tent’s black ceiling, casting vertiginous haloes as they arced over the curtains separating competition and practice, too thin and low to conceal the grunts (and occasional soaring lobs) from players training. Four rows of folding chairs for spectators ran along one edge of the courts, separated by belt stanchions. Air conditioning blasted from vents set unfortunately level with the tables, where they could interfere with the flight of the ball while also being mostly ineffectual against 110-degree heat. As I entered, already sweating from the walk—you had to buy tickets up near the main arena—I heard a fellow spectator mutter, “Fuck me, it’s terrible in here.” A Redditor reported that the men’s world No. 2, Chinese fan darling Wang Chuqin, nearly bumbled into the wrong side of the portable restroom before he was redirected by U.S. Olympic coach Gao Jun. 

This slapdash image is what WTT was surely hoping to avoid by staging a Grand Smash in the U.S., where table tennis is considered a hobby and relegated to crumbs in the American sports pie. (“I feel like I could do that,” a security worker told me.) The tournament arrived on the heels of some tantalizing, incremental progress. American Kanak Jha went pro in 2020 and has since reached world No. 28. Fellow Californian and Olympian Lily Zhang, who competes for India’s Ultimate Table Tennis, is No. 38 on the women’s side. 2020 and 2023 saw the establishment of PingPod, a chain of recreational table tennis spaces in several major cities, and Major League Table Tennis, the U.S.’s first pro table tennis franchise. Josh Safdie’s upcoming table tennis film, Marty Supreme, stars Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow. As a lifelong table tennis nerd, I was heartened by these developments, and hoped the Smash would be a blockbuster. Instead, I arrived for the main draw on July 8 to find the Maverick Arena nearly empty and the tent sparsely populated by table tennis insiders. Fan behavior was tepid, save for those who came to cheer on members of the Chinese national team. Even those diehards didn’t bother showing up until the quarterfinals began. 

Wandering the drafty halls outside the Maverick Arena, where a few equipment vendors and practice tables idled amidst light foot traffic, I encountered Americans similarly eager to support players but disheartened by low turnout. Jay and Lora Lonadier of Rochester, N.Y., who play recreationally and self-identified as “your mainstream white American audience,” found the pricing “ridiculous.” Every day of the draw ran two sets of simultaneous sessions, with up to five matches per session. To access all matches in a day—12:00 p.m. in the tent, 12:00 p.m. in the arena; 6:00 p.m. in the tent, 6:00 p.m. in arena—you had to buy four tickets and furiously dash between venues to string together your preferred draw. A full day cost at least $150 for the Round of 32 and over $300 for the cheapest seats in the semis and finals.

“We were going to come early,” Lora said, “but I gave up on that. We’re doing four sessions. They could charge $10 and we still wouldn’t have full stands. They don’t get it. People here don’t know table tennis.”

The Lonadiers also attended the 2024 Olympics in Paris and the 2021 World Championships in Houston. Both were packed. “Why’d they have it in Vegas?” wondered Lora. “Who wants to come to Vegas in July? Why didn’t they have it in New York or LA or Chicago, even? I think they chose the wrong place. I mean”—she gestured at the empty halls, grimacing—“it’s kind of sad.”

Greg Mascialino, who flew from Washington, D.C. with a group of friends, represented another significant demographic in American table tennis: young Asian Americans who grew up playing the sport. Mascialino and company arrived early to watch as much as possible. But next year, they said, if WTT doesn’t change the byzantine ticketing process, they probably won’t return.

“It feels like they were trying to squeeze you for money instead of making the event accessible to fans and the public,” Mascialino said. “It seems to have attracted the enthusiasts, but WTT doesn’t ever seem to do a great job packing the stands, and I’d like to be part of a table tennis event where it feels like a real sporting event.”

Everyone I spoke to agreed: To attract American fans, you need American stars. Jay Lonadier cited the French Lebrun brothers, who drew massive crowds to Paris and a WTT tournament in Montpellier—and at least a few fans across the world to Vegas. In the otherwise silent arena, I traced some enthusiastic Allez shouts to Montpellier native Julien Letalleur, who grew up alongside the Lebruns. He described them as “not like, LeBron James, but big.” But at the Smash, he said, “it’s like people came for the Chinese guys. Maybe next year it will be more crowded.”

Disappointment wasn’t restricted to the spectators. Players lamented the lack of audience and the playing conditions. The tent was hot; the balls bounced strangely even in the fancy arena, where only select teams were permitted to practice; the makeshift floor shook; practice tables were different from the ones used for competition. During qualifying, a player rage-smashed his racket on a table and broke it; a week later, table tennis channel PingSunday posted a scathing video titled “WTT USA Smash 2025: The ‘Smash’ Was the Table Itself,” with footage of Argentine Tiago Apolónia rocking the same table mid-match and appealing futilely to the umpire. During the round of 16, I saw Satsuki Odo, Japan’s third seed, bounce on her toes to demonstrate that the floor shook before crouching to serve with a look of genteel bemusement. 

“We played in a tent once in Saudi Arabia, but it was not nice, and we had all the same problems as here,” said Tomasz Redzimski, Poland’s head coach. “You couldn’t imagine what is happening in the practice venue. For example, the tables close to the wall: The air conditioning is so strong that when you’re serving, you throw the ball and you can’t catch it! I can imagine [that] to rent a venue for two weeks, it’s pretty expensive, but it’s too important and too big a tournament to compete in conditions like this.”

Sources at USATT said they recommended staging the tournament in the MGM, all indoors, but WTT declined their recommendation during later planning stages. According to those sources, the tournament was planned without much local input, though WTT declined to comment on specifics of tournament planning and publicity. 

Ning Chen, a tournament director who did not work the Smash but attended as a volunteer, said that besides hiring USATT-affiliated umpires and volunteers, WTT ran its own logistics. This was in marked contrast to the 2021 World Championships in Houston, which the Houston Sports Authority co-sponsored and promoted. “[The World Championships] was mostly local-led,” Chen said, “so they got a better deal for renting, they knew logistically how to run everything as smooth as possible. It was set up beautifully, it was in one center, the environment was great, the hospitality was great, and the audience showed up.” She also noted that Houston is home to huge Asian communities, and consequently a sizable number of table tennis fans. Many of her friends there did not attend the Smash due to cost and location. Maybe next time, she said, “we need to find a place that table tennis has a lot of roots locally.” 

Even in table-tennis poor Vegas, better local promotion and more reasonable pricing may have been able to draw more new fans like Keith and Valerie Waller, a retired couple from St. Louis who saw the Smash on a local events subscription service and got a discount. Via the same subscription service, they had also attended Andre Agassi’s pickleball exhibition, which piqued their interest in racket sports. Kimberly Gray, one of few non-Chinese women—or women spectators, period—I spotted in the tent, regularly samples the eclectic events in town. She spontaneously bought cheap tickets for the July 9 night session ($49.50) and was impressed by the sport’s speed and technique, but also felt WTT should have better ticketing and publicity. “There has to be some kind of gimmick to pull people who wouldn’t normally come,” she said. “I say ‘gimmick’ because things shouldn’t need that, but with society today, there has to be something to get people in the door.”

There was, nominally. Players walked into the Maverick Arena backed by whomping beats, sparklers, and flashing WWE-style graphics. Portland Trail Blazers draft pick Yang Hansen and MMA fighter Joanna Jędrzejczyk appeared for guest coin tosses. The merchandise stand sold player cards that were traded enthusiastically after Asian fans arrived. A few players—the U.K.’s Liam Pitchford and Korea’s Kim Nayeong, China’s Kuai Man and Lin Gaoyuan—staged hastily announced autograph sessions. On the marketing and publicity side, WTT released a steady stream of articles in collaboration with USATT, created lightly followed social media pages, and secured a streaming deal with ESPN3. Table Tennis Daily, a trio of major table tennis influencers, were permitted behind-the-scenes in the Maverick Arena and practice hall to film content. But for other spectators or even media hoping to help publicize, opportunities were relatively scarce. 

Tim Cudjoe, a social media manager, was thrilled for the chance to promote table tennis at the Smash. He obtained a press pass and filmed several reels a day for PingPod and his corporate sponsor, a major equipment company. As the tournament progressed, his job became more difficult. “The first day I was here, they let me into the floor area, but now it’s almost the finals, they’ve sectioned those places off,” Cudjoe said. “We should have all access to the players, the fan zone, more parts of the arena. I’m here to promote the sport as best as I can, and if they could give me that access, I would do it to the fullest of my ability.”

George Seicean, a long-time player from Sacramento, hoped to cover the tournament for his local newspaper and Romanian association, but was denied access altogether. “I got a letter to [the media person], I got a letter from the Romanian organization and the newspaper,” Seicean said. “I emailed, I sent him a text … It doesn’t make sense to deny the credentials when there’s no people here.”

I was also unable to obtain a press pass, or even get a response from the Smash’s media team until I solicited help on the table tennis subreddit and contacted the International Table Tennis Federation through a stranger, sent several unanswered emails alongside my editor, then asked multiple organizers at the event to submit media requests on my behalf. Eventually, I received an email from WTT’s COO that read, “Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, is the perfect stage for our first-ever WTT Grand Smash in North America. It is bold, high-energy, and exactly the kind of showcase an event like US Smash deserves. The popularity of table tennis in the U.S. continues to rise, and with LA 2028 on the horizon, we’re excited about the road ahead, and the role WTT plays in shaping it.”

The prevailing sentiment in the home crowd was that the tournament wasn’t “for” demographics it purported to reach or serve: devoted fans and promoters, new American fans, players. 

Historically, the U.S. table tennis problem is not caused by or linked to WTT, which the ITTF established in 2019 to expand and professionalize competitions. But the U.S. is a major, untapped market, and WTT itself touted the Smash as “a moment for table tennis to break through, not just in the arena, but in the wider sporting conversation across the Americas.” As I passed by posters of American players en route to empty stands, the question of domestic development felt ubiquitous. 

Structural conditions for American table tennis are bad. There is no cohesive local or national structure, and no access to a livable wage for players, unlike in powerhouses China, Japan, and Germany. Before Jha and Zhang, the last American to break the world’s top 100 was born in 1954. The sport is not commonly offered in schools. Beyond hubs in the Bay Area and a few other cities, clubs are few and far between, and top clubs in hot areas often compete for talent, prestige, and money. Private lessons can cost $50 per hour, and sometimes more than $100 with prestigious coaches. Americans who are serious about the sport go abroad. Jha moved to Germany at 16. Sally Moyland, this year’s U.S. national champion, trained and homeschooled in Taiwan from 2015 to 2021, living with her grandmother and spending all her free time at the table tennis club. In 2018, her mother Sophie Chen quit her job at Adobe to join Moyland overseas. 

Even when resources are available, incentives often don’t align. “A lot of players use it as a way to get into college, and that stops the U.S. from being a top competitor,” said Nandan Naresh, a U.S. national team member, Pan American gold medalist, and one of 10 Americans who competed in the Smash’s main draw. He pointed out that U.S. juniors are competitive at Pan American Games and World Youth Championships. “We have the talent. You see Kanak [Jha], he really committed himself, he’s now top 30 in the world, so I think people need to have that kind of mindset for the U.S. to flourish.”

Naresh, who grew up in Illinois, credits his success to his older brother Sid, also a high-level player, and his parents, who supported their training around the world. Without them, he said, it would have been hard to make it from the Midwest. Naresh was recently admitted to UC Berkeley, but will take two years to play in Düsseldorf. If he can make “a big jump” there, he’ll go pro. 

Contrast Naresh’s trajectory with the system in Germany: Intramural local leagues ladder up to pro teams, the former’s revenue helping to support the latter’s expenses alongside local corporate sponsorships and public funding. And in China, which has dominated table tennis to the point that people complain it killed the sport, kids play in school, adults play in parks, and normal people watch on TV like Americans do basketball and football. 

It’s not impossible to break the cycle. Pitchford, the U.K.’s top player, said the British table tennis scene was similarly tough when he came up. He left at 16 and lived abroad for 10 years; now he hopes to develop youth programming back home. Redzimski recalled a table tennis brain drain from Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union, from which Polish table tennis is still rebuilding. Even in countries with storied histories, interest comes and goes: Swedish player Anton Källberg, world No. 15 and a star player in the Bundesliga, recalled that table tennis was less popular when he was young. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sweden dominated with world champions Jan-Ove Waldner and Jorgen Persson, but its star waned until recently, when the Swedish men won silver at the 2024 Olympics. After that, Källberg said, they saw a boom in youth enrollment.  

A more analogous country might be Brazil, which Thiago Monteiro, Brazilian coach and former MLTT player, compared to the U.S. in size, diversity, and resource concentration. Brazil produced a major star in Hugo Calderano, winner of this year’s World Table Tennis Championships. (Calderano could not compete in the Smash; his visa was denied because he recently visited Cuba to compete.) Well before Calderano hoisted his trophy, the 2016 Olympics brought an influx of resources; before that, the Brazilian Table Tennis Confederation had been working for years to develop programming. “It just takes time,” Monteiro said. “I feel the U.S. is trying. [It] has a great generation of young and talented players. Some are already world class.”

The American players performed well at home. Naresh made it to the round of 16 in men’s doubles and mixed doubles, alongside his brother and Moyland, respectively. Up-and-comer Jessica Reyes-Lai outplayed her seeding to qualify for the main draw, and 14-year-old Irene Yeoh beat then-world No. 77 Giulia Takahashi. They did what they needed to. How much the tournament or WTT can change factors beyond their control—publicity, funding, prestige—remains to be seen. 

Forecasts from table tennis professionals varied, though most believe the Smash will become a  mainstay. “They need the American market,” texted Matt Hetherington, a manager at the American table tennis company Joola. A former pro with 112,000 followers on Instagram, Hetherington is something of a table tennis influencer in the States, but he’s less optimistic about the sport as a whole. “I’ve often wondered whether I made a mistake doing what I do,” he said. “It’s hard to see results.”

Kagin Lee, a member of the USATT board, was even less sanguine. “You know it’s a money loser, it’s going to be for years, and is it going to work out? I think it cannot if you go from top down,” he told me on the second day of the main draw. “They’re probably relying on spectators from China. That’s why it’s in Las Vegas and not California. Let’s say they come, and the stands are packed with Chinese spectators—does that grow U.S. table tennis? No. It grows the Smash. But is that going to result in a new über-Kanak? No. There’s no club that’s going to say, ‘Now you have an opportunity to play in the U.S. Smash.’ The only way to have a real U.S. table tennis culture is [from the] ground up. What we have today is better than before, and it’s because of the clubs. Forever, I’ve been advocating: We need to invest in the clubs.”

Perhaps it was hubristically American of me to hope one commercial sporting event might change everything. Five years ago, it would have been stunning to have one, let alone 10, American players in the main draw of a major international tournament, or to watch such high-level players live. As I sat through my fourth pre-match montage in the Maverick Arena (bison, Mustang convertibles, zoomed-in dollar bills), I found myself thinking that table tennis doesn’t need our bloviating presence anyway. We’re annoying. Besides, there’s already China—maybe one imperial force is enough.

Two days after the tournament ended, WTT and the ITTF announced plans to establish an American operations headquarters and a global training center in Los Angeles. “They were always going to do it,” Hetherington wrote. “Important market and LA 2028 coming.” 

The Olympics consistently bring new funding and attention. Perhaps, as in Brazil, this could be the turning point. Or perhaps we’d have to count on Marty Supreme. 

In the end, the matches at the Smash were amazing. Every hit rang rhythmic and crisp, the players’ athleticism even more striking without the camera’s mediating eye. Unusual playing conditions also produced great drama. The top two women, Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu, looked shaky all tournament and fell in the round of 16. The men’s fourth and fifth seeds, Liang Jingkun and Truls Moregardh, were eliminated before the quarterfinals. Alexis Lebrun, 10th seed, was faulted twice for illegal serves late in his round-of-16 decider and proceeded to chuck his towel over the barriers and scream while his coach applauded derisively in the umpire’s direction. “Putain!” Lebrun bellowed as he yanked his roller case toward the players’ quarters. 

On July 10, at the start of the quarterfinals, spectators from Asia finally descended. The ticket line extended down the long hall to the Orleans Casino. One Taiwanese fan rattled off five WTT tournaments she’d attended over the last year. The Asian fans made the atmosphere what I’d hoped for: They cheered every point, led chants, waved cutouts of beloved players’ faces, even screamed obscenities. The contrast also reminded me of how much I’d enjoyed the matches watched in relative anonymity and intimacy, despite my reservations about low turnout. In addition to approaching coaches and players in the tent—at times hardly an approach; Redzimski had plopped beside me, eating two apples—I stumbled across Pitchford several times in the arena nosebleeds, and nearly barreled into a fuming Moregardh as I ducked around the corner to charge my phone. That was the table tennis world I knew, kooky and overly familiar. I cherished it even as I wished for its demise.

On my penultimate day, I visited Lee’s Table Tennis, a local club briefly overrun by Smash spectators. It comprised eight tables in a high-ceilinged, skylit room, a giant fan blasting from beside the door and a squat HVAC doing its best in the far corner. The owner, Emily Gong, is a former pro from Liaoning whose daughter coaches during her free time but will leave for Stanford in the fall. It’s a common backstory for peripheral table tennis clubs; my childhood coach, a junior champion in Shanghai, taught group lessons on four tables in her basement. Both clubs were plastered with posters featuring pros I’d just seen live. For a few blessed rallies, their likenesses inspired me, and I played above my level. Then heat set in, as did rustiness. This is what it’s all about, I thought, gnawing a slice of the watermelon Gong distributed to her new guests: fighting in terrible conditions for a second of transcendence.

A couple hours later, I was back in the cool, flashing Maverick Arena for Wang Chuqin’s semifinal against Félix Lebrun. Wang’s fangirls packed the best sections. As I listened to women behind me scream their lungs out, drowning out the few stubborn cries of Allez, I had to admire their passion, their all-consuming exhilaration and belonging. They appreciated the experience far better than I did. 

“I couldn’t get tickets to watch table tennis in China if I tried,” said a Chinese spectator who chose to be identified as Auntie Zhang. “You have to fight with everyone online … of course the conditions are worse here, it’s different here. Since the ‘60s, China has been developing table tennis as its national sport. It’s of great economic and political importance.”

She smiled proudly at this last line. Lebrun and Wang went to seven games, playing some of the best table tennis I’d ever seen.