2005 USATT Hall of Fame Inductee: John Tannehill

By Tim Boggan, USATT Historian

Dick Evans, co-manager of the Columbus, Ohio Club during the 1960’s, tells us how, even before John Tannehill was a teenager, his father, Chet, publisher/editor of a newspaper for the Gallipolis/Pomeroy communities along the Ohio river, had started bringing him to Columbus to play. After a time, however, since home was Middleport, Ohio near the West Virginia border, 100 miles away, Chet “would leave John to spend the weekend in the home of one of our club members, usually John Spencer’s.” There young Tannehill not only improved his table tennis—by 1965 he’d win the U.S. Open Boys U-13 from Glenn Cowan—but his chess with Spencer and Dick Miles’s friend Freddie Borges.

During the ‘66-67 season, John was U.S. #1 in Boys U-15 and U.S. #2 behind Cowan in Boys U-17. Then, only 15 years old, playing at the U.S. Open Team Championships (USOTC’s), he had a 17-3 record, was named the tournament’s outstanding male player, and for 1967 was ranked  #7 among U.S. men.

 In 1968 Ichiro Ogimura came to North America, and at the Toronto Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) tournament John was pleased to have had his picture taken with this great Japanese player/coach and the reigning U.S. #1, D-J Lee. Motivated, John, back home in Middleport with no weekday club to practice at, adopted the following two-hours-a-day training program Ogi had given him:

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