Germany's Olga Nemes

Olga made it to the Semifinals of the U.S. Open ITTF Pro Tour by upsetting top-seeded Zhang Yining of China

By Tim Boggan

I met Olga Nemes almost 15 years ago when she came to the U.S. for the first time on holiday. She’d known my sons Scott and Eric from their play in the Bundesliga, and through a connection with Annagret Steffien of Schildkrot, Eric’s sponsor. She was our welcome house guest for several days – slept, in Scott’s absence, in his room, perhaps thinking of how, as she’d come into her teens, she’d quite liked this young man.

Of course my wife and I were privy to Olga’s precocious table tennis successes – how, playing for Romania, she’d won the European Top 12 when she was just 14, and had then gone on, in novel fashion, to expatriate to Germany, and become one of the world’s best players, Europe #1 in fact.

An adventurous move she’d made – and a much desired one, for Life in Romania was not Life in Germany. While playing in Switzerland, her tournament unfinished, she took a life-changing chance. Helped by we’ll call him Agent X, Olga, since she hadn’t a passport, and entry from one country to another in those Iron Curtain days was difficult enough anyway, agreed to be smuggled into Germany. She hid in the closed trunk of a car that pulled up to a border check point. Although she couldn’t see, she could hear ... what she didn’t want to hear. That the driver of the car in front of her had been asked to open his trunk. My god, I’m caught, she thought. But Agent X was no dummy. He’d brought along his mother. And now as the car made its approach he got out and, showing his passport, walked through the check point – leaving his courageous, aging mother, alias Agent M, to drive up alone to ... proceed unhindered.

Naturally on discovering that Olga was nowhere to be found, the Romanian Coach was worried ... and embarrassed. But of course the police couldn’t help him – Olga was, mysteriously, a missing person. Then, for a time, a wanted fugitive ... but a safe one. After her “disappearance,” it’d be 3 and 1/2 years before she’d see her parents again. Since it was her father, Josef, who’d encouraged her to develop into a player, it was he, rather than her mother, who had the least difficulty acclimating to her absence. Meanwhile, young Olga would win the first of her German National Championships, as well as the European Ladies Grand Prix, and would maintain a high world ranking (an incomplete check of which shows that as early as Aug., 1982 she was World #27 and as late as July, ‘86 she was World #14).

All this I heard about in detail, not when Olga visited us for a few days during those 10 months or so when a thyroid condition was preventing her from playing in the ‘87 World’s and other tournaments, but when I interviewed her this July at the ITTF’s Pro Tour U.S. Open.

On graduating from her teens, Olga continued her strong play. In 1990 she was European Top 12 runner-up, and then would go on to have successes in other tournaments and in her Bundesliga matches. As expected, she made technical advances over the years – learned, for example, a chop/block, and to better mix the pace of her blocks. In time she married – Istvan was his name; he was a Hungarian (but not a table tennis player) – and in 1995, on taking a break from Open tournaments, she gave birth to her husband’s namesake son, Steven (that being the English equivalent of the Hungarian Istvan). Ten days later she was back practicing, and inside of two months, after wins over Internationals Nicole Struse and Jie Schoepp, she was again the German National Champion. “I have good staying power,” she says. “I have to because I’m always on the run.” The more so now since she’s divorced from Istvan, who continues to share a genial relationship with their son. Right now six-year-old Steven wants to play soccer, and that’s fine with Olga – she herself enjoys tennis and roller skating. “I like it that Steven’s interested in some sport, it doesn’t have to be table tennis – I’m not pushing him to get into that.”

“When I was pregnant and had that lay-off,” Olga says, “I saw how much I needed to play – realized how much I appreciated the Game. Before, I’d played for everybody else; from then on I began playing for me.” Still, up until recently she was a member of the German National Team, but now, at 33, and by her own choice, has at least temporarily relieved herself of that responsibility.

Her way was paid to Fort Lauderdale, not by the Deutscher Tischtennis-Bund (none of the Germans playing and vacationing here were funded by their Association), but by her Tus Bad Driburg Club’s #1 sponsor, Wadther Glas, who pays her expenses to Pro Tour events.

Ordinarily, as World #39, she would have drawn a first-round bye in this Open. But by a quirk of Fate, the World #85 South Korean player, Park Kyung Ae, whom the Tournament Committee thought was entered, had not come to the States at all (and unfortunately never would, for back in Korea her heart had stopped in childbirth and she had died). In her place was a lesser, unranked player with the exact same name, Park Kyung Ae, who became Olga’s first losing opponent. Then, showing what fast hands she still had, regardless of the fact that she wasn’t practicing so much, and certainly not training – running in the morning heat like her Swedish doubles partner Asa Svensson – she defeated Danish qualifier Pia Finnemann. Then followed by eliminating Hungary’s World #16 Csilla Batorfi.

That brought her – the only non-Asian – to the quarter’s and the #1 seed, China’s World #3 Zhang Yining. Up 2-0 and creating quite a stir among the spectator-players, Olga rallied in the third, came from 18-13 down to go 20-19 match-point up. Then, as one fellow said, “She made the only mistake of the match.” She served long – and Zhang ripped it cross-court in. After which Olga lost two long blocking points. Then in the fourth she was behind 8-0 – a hopeless situation. Down 3-0 in the fifth, Olga had to be “toast,”as they say – or so everyone, almost everyone, thought. But Olga did have staying power ... and up 20-18 she served, as one observer said, “her only high toss of the match,” looped a follow, and Zhang, out of position, spun a forehand long.

The USATT’s Richard McAfee (who not long ago had conducted an Olympic Solidarity Coaching Course in the West Indies) was watching this upset. “A classic counter-driver,” he called Olga, who’d been streaking backhand exchanges through her opponents. “And what’s so noticeable, so effective, to me,” he said, “ is her ability to backhand-stroke from what for many would be an awkward position. Most right-handers make that counter stroke from their mid-section and often have to move left to do it, thus leaving their forehand side more open. But Olga can initially reach further to her left than most and still smoothly make the speedy counter – that’s a definite advantage.”

In the semi’s, against the previous week’s unexpected Brazilian Open winner, Japan’s Aya Umemura, Olga (a bit irritated after initially being faulted three times – “her serve,” said the umpire, “went up two inches and back four”) was down 2-1 and at 15-all in the fourth. Then, on losing two points, as she had no one in her corner, she called Time herself, but couldn’t come back to reach the final (later won by China’s Niu Jianfeng).

Still, combining business with outdoor hot-tub pleasure, she picked up $2,250 for her singles effort. “Table Tennis is my job,” she says. “I prefer playing to coaching – but I like to help young players. I helped my Romanian friend, Mihaela Steff, come to my Bundesliga Club. When my playing days are over, if I don’t coach, I’ll do something else. I am not afraid of the future.”

Who, seeing in the mind’s eye, that trunk door closing in on her, could ever think Olga would be afraid to meet her future – then or now.