46^th World Table Tennis Championships

Osaka, Japan · April 23 - May 6, 2001

Ruth Aarons and Trude Pritzi Named Co-World Champions for 1937

The letter below was recently presented to the ITTF, and on April 24th, the ITTF Council approved it. It is expected that at the April 26th AGM meeting, USA and Austria will be presented with certificates and awards signifying this.

The USATT, on a recommendation from its Hall of Fame founder, Steve Isaacson, recommended that 1937 World Women’s Singles Finalists Ruth Aarons of the U.S. and Trude Pritzi of Austria be declared co-Champions and an appropriate award be presented on their behalf to their respective associations.

Because of a controversial time-limit rule, this 1937 final match between these two great players was stopped and the title declared vacant – an historical oddity. As there was no expedite rule at the time (though the ITTF would later see the wisdom of adopting it), the players were trapped into extending their match, large because of Miss Pritzi’s relentlessly defensive style, which forced Defending Champion Aarons to wait, wait, wait for the right ball to attack – a strategy that given the time constriction was doomed from the beginning.

Said ITTF President Ivor Montagu, "I regard the temporary [time-limit] rule as a thoroughly bad one. It offers to an inferior player, without the ability to defeat his superior opponent, the means whereby he may, none the less, remove him from the competition."

Said USATT President Carl Zeisberg, "Instead of being penalized in this instance, Miss Aarons deserves the thanks of the ITTF for preventing capture of the world title by a player who never hits the ball. We will continue to publicize Miss Aarons as the undefeated World Champion.

Not only was this unprecedented action to declare the title vacant based on an almost evenly divided 7-5 vote, but the injustice of it was reflected in the fact that, as table tennis historians can show, the time limit rule was NOT enforced uniformly at the tournament. Indeed, to take just one example, Pritzi earlier had played Angelica Adelstein (later Rozeanu) a four-game match that had exceeded the one hour and 45 minute time limit, but this had been allowed because officials said they did not need the table.

There is ample precedent in sports for such a reversal – one may remember that after American Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic medals, the IOC, 70 years later, restored them to him.

What better way to show the integrity of the ITTF as it publicizes its 75^th anniversary than to correct this misjudgment which asterisks so peculiarly in the annals of our History.

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