2000 USATT HALL OF FAME AWARDS

Left: Bob Green, Sol Schiff, Cheng Yinghua, Attila Malek, Hall of Fame President Jimmy McClure. Photo copyright 2000 by Don Varian.

On Dec. 14, 2000, more than 100 stories heavenward, in the Stratosphere Hotel at Las Vegas, the 18th Hall of Fame Awards Banquet was held before another capacity crowd. Three new inductees were honored--National Champions Attila Malek and Cheng Yinghua, and longtime Contributor Bob Green. In addition, the second annual Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award was presented--to Sol Schiff.

Many thanks to all involved--the participants, the attendees, and the extremely helpful and courteous hotel banquet staff. Also, for their continued efforts to make the Hall as prestigious as possible, a special thanks to Hall of Fame President Jimmy McClure, Hall of Fame founder Steve Isaacson, MC Tim Boggan, and Lifetime Achievement Award donor Mark Matthews (formerly Marcus Schussheim), our first (1931) National Champion.

Now, a little about the Award recipients. (For more details, see my "Profiles" on the USATT website--www.usatt.org).

ATTILA MALEK (Player)

Before emigrating to the U.S. in 1978--via Italy, where he and his wife Sylvia had to wait seven months for the CIA to check them out--Attila Malek played for the Ganzmavag Club that was third best in the 12-team Hungarian League. But good as he’d been--for years, he’d often played 6-8 hours a day--it would take him time in the States to regain his form. "Only through tournament play," he emphasized, "can you learn again and again that you must never be afraid to take your usual shots." And in the final of the 1979 U.S. Closed, he wasn’t afraid--beat Danny Seemiller, 18 in the 5th.

In 1980, Malek, D-J Lee, and Scott and Eric Boggan won the U.S. Open Team Championship, after which Attila followed fellow Joola-sponsored teammate Lee out to Las Vegas where for seven years he’d have a steady job as a casino dealer and, with the birth of his sons, Chris and Scott, new responsibilities. During this time he was a member of the U.S. Team to the 1983 Tokyo World’s, and at the 1985 U.S. Closed he made a successful debut in winning the Over 30s.

In the late ‘80’s Malek and his family (including now daughter Brittany) would leave Vegas for California, where Attila would get into the mortgage, then the insurance business. But neither playing cards nor business cards offered him enough satisfaction. Fortunately, he found his calling, became a born again Christian--for "God," he says, "always gives you the desires of your heart. He changed my life, put me back seriously into table tennis. Not just to play, but to do the work of the Lord, whatever in the Sport that might be."

More Over 30 wins in the majors followed, and in 1993 Attila won the U.S. Closed Over 40. In the 1994 Meiklejohn Over 40 there was a poignant bit of drama in the 5th game of his losing match against Seemiller. Attila is up 13-10, then drops 6 in a row to go down 16-13. At which point he calls to his son Scott who’s been rooting for him to "Please go away." And the kid--who’s wearing a T-shirt with the definition of "Holy" on it: "set apart in the service of a loving God"--knowing his father didn’t mean to hurt him, quickly, dutifully does set himself apart...only to continue to root for him from a distance.

Much more important to Attila in this new millenium, however, is not his own continued success on court--at the ‘98 U.S. Open he reached two finals--but his work with children and their parents at his Newport Beach, CA full-time Training Center. He wants through competitive table tennis to teach these youths Christian values, wants these "gentle fighters" to be aware of the importance of being civil and decent. He feels God has given him the vision to bring about Local, Regional, and National Scholarship Fundraising Tournaments so that "Juniors as young as 7 years old will be able to start to earn money toward their education." Hence he’s formed Power Pong Youth International, a non-profit organization that he prays will attract sponsors. "I dream," he says, "of an Association that has the know-how to make the U.S. the Table Tennis capital of the world."

CHENG YINGHUA (Player)

Many of us came to know, know of, Cheng Yinghua ("Chen" to his familiars) when he won the 1985 U.S. Open. Three years later, since he’d been Head Coach for China’s Sichuan Province, the USTTA was pleased to hire him, and position him at Colorado Springs to be a practice partner and coach for our National Team members and Resident Training Program hopefuls.

By 1988 Chen had been a member of the Chinese National Team for maybe 10 years. His career began when his grade-school Phys. Ed. teacher, whom little Chen sometimes beat, encouraged him and even loaned him a penholder racket to play with. This, embarrassingly, he lost. But the teacher was nice, and found another racket--one, as History would have it, for a shakehands player.

In time, a coach recommended that Chen enter his province’s table tennis school. So, as a 12-year-old, he began drawing a salary. His parents were proud and encouraged him. "You must listen to the coach," said his mother. Not that she saw him very much, for at his home away from home "he trained six hours a day, six days a week."

With his European-like, two-winged inverted shakehands game (at which he’s "equally comfortable blocking or looping"), Chen was most valuable to the Chinese as a world-class practice partner for the National Team. But he did have tournament successes of his own. In 1982 he got to the final of the Chinese Elite Championship; in ‘83 he won the Finland Open; and in ‘87 he paired with World and Olympic Games Doubles Champion Chen Longcan to score a first in Doubles at the prestigious 6th China National Games.

By 1991, Chen, who’d already won the Corporate Games in San Francisco and been on a couple of winning USOTC teams, began a dual career of coaching and competing in his adopted country. One later "Profile" of him had it that from 1992-96 he and his fellow Chinese National, "Jack" Huang, who’d also come to the States, on basing themselves at the Potomac Club and at the National Training Center in nearby Rockville, MD, coached more than 30 Junior National Singles winners. No wonder in 1996 Chen was named USOC National Coach of the Year. And while spreading "Chinese coaching methods in over 50 training camps and over 10,000 hours of private lessons" here in the

U.S., Chen also went round the country sometimes losing but usually winning tournament after tournament from his arch rivals--Johnny Huang (whom he beat in the final of the ‘93 U.S. Open), David Zhuang, Xu Huazhang, and Jimmy Butler.

Climaxing his 1994 season was his deuce-in-the-3rd win at the World Cup in Taipei over France’s then World Champion Jean Philippe Gatien, the eventual winner of the tournament. Later, at the ‘95 U.S. Open, he played a great but losing 24-22 in the 5th match against a Chinese Taipei youth he’d been giving mental tips to, Chiang Peng-Lung, destined to be the 1999 U.S. Open and 2000 Asian Champion. Shortly afterwards, at the World Team Cup, Chen helped the U.S. achieve its best Team result in decades, building up his confidence by downing Sweden’s former World and reigning Olympic Champion, Jan-Ove Waldner, then finishing off Belgium’s Philippe Saive and France’s Damien Eloi.

There then followed, as the old millenium moved to its close and Chen was named USOC Athlete of the Year, three U.S. Closed Men’s Singles and two Men’s and two Mixed Doubles Championships. And, yes, Chen was playing in the Over 40 events now, and doing quite well--for example, in the 2000 Meiklejohn tournament he took home $2,300 in prize money. Not bad, considering at one time in his life he hadn’t money enough to buy a racket.

BOB GREEN (Contributor)

Bob Green, more than just an accomplished player, was primarily a versatile contributor to the Sport--at first, most notably locally, as the 15-year successful manager of a table tennis club, one that in the 1940’s in Columbus, Ohio could boast of over 200 players in All-Star, industrial, commercial, and novice league play.

As a rapidly improving player, Bob had early Mixed Doubles success with Leah Thall of Columbus (later World Mixed Doubles Champion Leah Neuberger). And, in Singles, he aided the U.S. in routing the Canadians in 1941 Toronto Team Matches, and afterwards won, among other tournaments, the Ohio Open. By the Spring of 1945, he was among the Top 10 players in the country. Bob would eventually retire from competition, then, after a long absence, would come back to win U.S. Over 60 and 70 titles, as well as several Senior Olympic Championships. In his heyday, Bob also helped to improve the games of Thelma "Tybie" Thall (Leah’s sister, who would also be World Mixed Doubles Champion), Ohio Junior Champion Dave Spence, and another U.S. Top 10 player, Guy Blair.

Bob was best known nationally, though, as a Tournament Director. After receiving praise for his handling of the Western Open, he put on the ‘48 National’s in Columbus. This drew a 136 entries--a record for the 1940’s. The matches were played on 16 tables, double the number used previously. Photos of the huge hall of the tournament show the vast spidery wiring Bob took immense pains to put up so that the players would have the best lighting possible. Relatively patient he was too when in the semi’s Doug Cartland, who was playing Dick Miles, went through maybe a dozen balls, and then insisted on Green finding more. "My wrist still twitches from spinning then," Bob would say later. Miles won this semi’s, then would go on to beat Marty Reisman in a marvelous deuce-in-the-5th final.

Bob also ran the 1950 National Team Championships--for a record-breaking 12 teams. The entry fee was $30 a team, and all players were required to wear white, with the name of the player and his team on the back of his shirt. Unfortunately, play occurred during Columbus’s worst blizzard in 37 years. Reisman was stranded in Pittsburgh; and the first-ever California team to attend these NTC’s got stuck in Richmond, Indiana and didn’t arrive until the 5th match of the final tie--at 10: 15 Sunday evening!

For a while Bob was Editor of the Association’s magazine, Topics, and wrote an interesting "Sidelines" column (one topic had to do with the Vice Squad being called in at the ‘52 Cleveland National’s to stop certain players from gambling on the matches). Years later Bob would write a "Did’Ja Know?’ column (and again delighted readers with talk of how our International player Doug Cartland got caught trying to smuggle hundreds of watches into the U.S.).

Green’s most recent major accomplishment was (with Leah’s sister Tybie’s blessing) to preserve former USTTA Historian Neuberger’s historic material that had given meaning to her life. By working three hours a day for three months, he was able to pack up, bind, and ship me, who’d succeeded Leah as Historian, a select treasure trove of 22 cartons, 627 pounds, of irreplaceable records and memorabilia. The preservation of this historic legacy became a catalyst for me to persevere with my own collecting so as to write, and now see published, the first volume of my projected multi-volume History of U.S. Table Tennis. For this selfless effort on Bob’s part, I’m sure I’m only one of many who, as long as the Sport is played, will be indebted to him.

SOL SCHIFF (Lifetime Achievement Award Winner)

After honing his game at the 92nd St. YMHA with the encouragement of George and Leo Schein, Sol, at 15, was both the 1933 New York City Junior Champion and High School Champion. At 16, he won the coveted Singles and Doubles titles at the (1st) 1934 USTTA Open.

In 1935 he attended his first World’s and took the Men’s Consolation, defeating England’s Alec Brook, who, as the crowd roared with laughter, "put Sol’s [knuckleball/fingerspin] services everywhere except on the table." For his straight-game victory, Sol received a silver medal, and an exact though naturally smaller 12-inch Sheffield silver replica of the prestigious Singles Cup given to Men’s Champion Victor Barna.

Sol was just 18 when, after starring for victorious N.Y. at the Team Championships, he won the 1936 American Zone U.S. Closed. After that, amid very debatable circumstances, he was suspended--prevented from playing in that year’s World’s and U.S. Open--for USTTA President Carl Zeisberg, as part of his vendetta against Ping-Pong, had made Sol a scapegoat for signing a racket contract with Parker Brothers.

At the 1937 World’s, Sol compiled a fantastic 21-1 record in Swaythling Cup play that greatly contributed toward the U.S.’s one and and only win in that competition. In Singles, he led that year’s eventual World Champion Richard Bergmann 2-1, but lost in 5.

In 1938, after the ITTF followed the lead of the USTTA and lowered the net from 6 and 3/4" to 6" Sol paired with 1936 and ‘37 World Doubles Champion Jimmy McClure to win a 3rd straight Doubles Championship for the U.S. In Singles, after knocking out 1936, ‘37, and ‘39 Singles runner-up Alex Ehrlich, Sol was beaten in the quarter’s by Tibor Hazi. However, before returning to the States, he and 1935 U.S. Open Champion Abe Berenbaum won the English Open Doubles. And once back home he and McClure added the U.S. Open Doubles to their increasing triumphs.

Sol would go on for decades to win honors on and off the table. In the 40’s he would be a 3-time U.S. Open runner-up, and in the Singles at the ‘47 World’s he gave that year’s runner-up, Ferenc Sido, a furious 5-game battle. But it was in Doubles that much of his later fame came. Astonishingly, through 27 years, he was a 10-time Men’s Doubles and 15-times Mixed Doubles U.S. Open finalist. And at the annual CNE tournament in Toronto, a tournament second in prestige only to the U.S. Open, Sol’s record shows 5 Singles, 8 Men’s Doubles, and 11 Mixed Doubles wins.

Back in the 30’s he’d begun giving exhibitions around the country, and in wartime continued them, before, during, and after he’d served in the Army. Later, selling table tennis equipment, he became a much sought after dealer for his accomodating nature and ready availability. Still later, furthering our international contacts, and putting all his domestic experience to good use, he served as President of the USTTA for an unprecedented 10 years, 8 of those consecutively.

It’s with good reason then that for his lifetime dedication to the Sport Sol was, is, and always will be known as "Mr. Table Tennis."