
Ping does it. One second later pong. A sneaker squeaks on the hall floor. Its carrier stretches and stretches, reaches the small, white ball with the bat in his hand, plays it back with pressure. Ping! Otto einbecker has placed his shot so precisely on the edge of the ping pong table that his opponent can no longer reach it. Winning points!
More than two million times this scene has happened in one way or another. Otto einbecker, 75, has been a passionate table tennis player since 1980. The 1.88 meter tall man is the best advertisement for his sport, which has kept him fit for decades. "The beauty of table tennis," says einbecker with a friendly grin, "is that age hardly matters.". Even as a pensioner, he says, it’s no problem to achieve great success at the plate.
Table tennis, according to the lexicon, is tennis in miniature. A ball made of celluloid with a diameter of four centimeters is played back and forth on a plate. The plate is divided into two halves with a net. As in "rough" tennis, the goal is to outplay the opponent so that he can no longer reach the ball.