Cary Cup Championships

Cary, NC, Mar 16-18, 2007

Beginning in 2002 as a relatively localized event, the Cary Cup Championships have been so championed, so energized by CTTA President Mike Babuin’s love of the Sport—seen also in his table tennis archival interests, his display cases of artifacts at this tournament—that each successive year has brought a deeper field, until now the Cup’s $8,000 in prize money and $4,000 in beautiful outsized trophies has drawn more than 200 entries, including some of the foremost names in North American table tennis. And if the play’s the thing—wow! There were only seven events—and yet California’s Loc Ng, who entered four of them, and who says he likes round robins because they allow him to warm up, played 32 matches! M’god, that in itself would fill a photo-album for Tournament Photographer Bill Chestnut.

Safe to say, the sponsors—the Town of Cary, the Marriott Courtyard, Raleigh’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, Newgy, Butterfly, and NC Communications—must have been very pleased with the large turnout. They also must have liked the classy Souvenir Program with its Graphic Design work by Dean Johnson and Chris O’Brian, its color photos and bios of the featured players. A special thanks must go to Mike for his well prepared and carried through directives both to the players and his accomodating staff—wife Mandy; daughters Lisa, Julia, and Lucy Tiefenthaler; and Deputy Operations Director Daphne Lee—and also to the support given by Tournament Referee Larry Kesler, Deputy Ref Jim McQueen, and Chief Umpire Dick Evans.

Friday evening, the money winners in the opening round robin Women’s event were: 1. Soo-Yeon Lee ($500). 2. “Brenda” Hye-Sook Mun ($200). 3. Barbara Wei ($100). 4. Dominique Flaxer ($100). Both Soo (“Sue”?) and “Brenda” in years past played for their Korean National Sports University Team in Seoul, though at different times, and in different ways. Soo-Yeon, 27 (rated 2387), is a shakehands chopper (long pips on the backhand), based, since coming to the U.S. about 18 months ago, in Los Angeles. Hye-Sook, who looks to be Lee’s age but is 10 years older, is a 2091-rated (under-rated?) penholder and the perennial US Open Women’s Under 2100 Champion. Both Brenda and just-turned-18 Barbara Wei had trouble reading Soo-Yeon’s same-stroke changing spin. Brenda said she hadn’t played a chopper in three years, but needed no explanations on defeating 2214-rated Barbara who’s fond of demonstrating her mild frustrations with an occasional spin around, expressive hand movements, and eyes to an unhelpful heaven.

The $400 first prize in Open Doubles went to the Canadian Internationals Wilson Peng Zhang and Pradeeban Peter-Paul. The Florida team of Alex Aponte/Yosmely Vadillo ($200) emerged from a three-way tie to take second. Lee, Soo-Yeon/Kim, Bong Geun received the third-place trophy—though Kim didn’t dare write home about that, for his father had won a Gold Medal in Disabled play at the ’88 Seoul Olympics. Han Xiao/Eric Owens, seeded second, got zilch. Other Doubles Results: Under 2000: 1. Heath Tuttle/Mary Crusius. 2. Rosemary Le/Julia Morse. 3. Jeff Bella/Irina Zaverukha. Under 3000: 1. Elias Gomez, Sr. and Jr. 2. Derek Xu/Ilya Zaverukha. 3. Brian and Brandon Luong. Under 4000: 1. Ray Mack/Chris O’Brian. 2. Mike Stowell/Gregg Robertshaw. 3. Dimitri and Ilya Moundous.

Saturday: a single monster event. First stage: 40 round robins of four. Second stage: the 40 winners go into four round robin groups of ten, numbered A-1 through A-4. The 40 second-place, third-place, and fourth-place finishers go, respectively, into their B, C, and D ten-player round robins. Third stage: the top two players from each of the four groups of ten in their respective divisions go into single elimination: quarter’s, semi’s, final. Add up the number of matches in each stage and you’ll see that the finalists will have played 15 matches on this one day!
There were two striking upsets in first stage play: N.C. State Games Junior star Ashwin Peres-Da-Silva (rated 1929), a 15-year-old high school sophomore with almost perfect scores (790 out of 800) in English and Math achievement tests, over Egypt’s Mohamed Younes (2200); and John Lee (1863) over Rich DeWitt (2351), at nine in the fifth! Not surprisingly, Rich, who’d table tennis trained in Sweden and Romania, and is said to have the highest rating ever (2457) of any resident player in Connecticut,

someone had called them); those were “Classic,” had been exclusively adopted for the 1959 China National Sports Meet. But, hey, why be exclusive? Nothing wrong with them after almost 50 years, they’d been sealed up in their original boxes, but, o.k., they were 38 mm, so he’d use them for the Hardbat play on Sunday.

In the other semi’s, Zhuang downed Peter-Paul ($300) in straight games. Pradee tells me that the Brazilian coach at their Ottawa Training Center is pretty much insisting on two practice sessions a day. “How can you be an International otherwise?” he says. This Canadian coach’s hardest worker? Wilson Peng Zhang. He practices, practices, practices.
Fittingly, the final between the 43-year-old U.S. Champion and the 27-year-old Canadian Champion is an entertaining one.

While waiting for Wilson to arrive at the table, David goes over to the scoreboard, arranges it to show 11-0 and a red 3, and raises his hands in victory. Evans responds by giving him a red card. Of course there’d be no easy win here. With the match tied 1-1, the short, compact Chinese-cum-Canadian sweeps in a barrage of backhand loops, followed by a leaping forehand that brings him to 10-5, after which he eventually closes with another laser-like killer for a 2-1 lead.

In the 4th there are more bursting backhands and forehands from Wilson…but David, with perfect anticipation, rockets these balls back with spectacular jab-thrusting placements, and, with some awkward but adroit “gets,” moves from 5-6 down to 8-6 up. Then loses four in a row as Zhang begins making little whoo sounds on his way to double match point. Wilson gambles on ending it all with forehands—misses two, then scores the 3rd that earlier would have won him the match.

But now David, again one point from defeat, plays as fearless, as gutsy, a drawn-out “hand-to-hand” attacking exchange as one could imagine. Deuce! The Program’s cover shot of a triumphant David comes to life—he roars at the awed audience. Then gets the ad himself. Feeling the crowd is with him, he says aloud, “One more point, right?” He gets it, but not until he’s caught Wilson with a great far-forehand placement to go up 14-13.

Alas, however, the fifth is not to be contested. Result: Zhang ($2,000) over Zhuang ($1,000).
Sunday’s play focuses on two tournaments—the Under 1250/Beginners ($200 in prize money and trophies); and the “U.S. Classic Open” (that’s a return to Hardbat play as it flourished in the middle of the last century with specific paddle-covering restrictions, 18 mm balls, and 21-point games). This “Classic” competition called for a first stage (nine round robins of three players each) that would determine the relative positions for the second stage (three round robins of nine players each in A, B, and C groups—with only the nine qualifying A players eligible for the $2,100 in cash prizes).

The very pleased fourth-place finisher was Dimitri Moundous. In the round robin pre-lims he’d eked out a 20, 20 win over Kim, Bong Geun who’d never played hardbat before and so every time he’d lose a point would smile and automatically look at his racket. Kim went on to win not cash but the B group, while the third-place finisher, Dean Norman, took the C’s. Three weeks ago, Dimitri had bought a hardbat racket from jaunty-capped Jim McQueen and liked the control it gave him. He won his $300 by prevailing in three over Mike Stowell who at times would stop play to carry on a troubled interior dialogue with self—a habit he probably acquired after practicing with Pete May. You didn’t know? Disco Golf has put Augusta, GA on its map: Pete’s now the number two Over 60 player in the World, and Augusta is his oyster.

Also $300 richer was third-place finisher Ray Mack who’d been having a heel of a lot of trouble with a bone spur. Loc Ngo wasn’t surprised to be the ($500) runner-up, for he felt his hardbat play was within 100 rating points of his sponge play.

Eric Owens ($1,000), abetted by his court jester, Andre Scott, successfully defended his 2006 title, losing only one game—to Mack. Someone stunned me by asking if, space/time continuum in agreement, I thought Eric could beat 4-time World Champion Richard Bergmann, that consummate professional of the Classic game. Perhaps, I ventured dryly to Eric, he should consider giving up thoughts of being an orthopedic surgeon, and follow in Bergmann’s footsteps, continue making money as he did here. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Why make $500,000 a year when I can make $30,000 playing table tennis, and then, as I get older and have injuries, be able to make $20,000.”