PALO ALTO, California - The ball moves so fast that 27-year-old Yassin Sibai doesn't even look for it. Instead, he focuses on his opponent's hands.
By studying minute changes in posture and flicks of his opponent's wrist, Sibai gauges the spin and direction of the small celluloid ball as it rockets toward him at nearly 100 mph.
While the persistent hollow clack of a Ping-Pong ball hitting the table reminds most Americans of community center rec rooms or lazy, rainy Sundays in Mom and Dad's basement, table tennis is an Olympic sport in which the competition -- particularly in Europe and Asia -- is stiff.
Ping-Pong is a registered trademark of the Parker Brothers corporation and therefore, for official purposes, the sport is called table tennis.
"I call it Ping-Pong," says Dennis Davis, head coach at the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club and former National Coaching Chairman of USA Table Tennis. "Some people would turn their nose up at that, but it's the same thing."
Sibai, a Hayward resident and software engineer, played table tennis competitively on a university team in Lebanon, where he trained several hours a day, three to four times a week. He has played in European national championship games as well.
"I came to the States five years ago and it has been hard to find other professional players," he says. "It's been even harder to find places to play."
Ironically, Sibai is in the right place, at least in terms of the rest of the country. The Bay Area, one of the nation's hot spots for table tennis, has programs in Concord, Palo Alto and San Francisco that rank in the top six clubs in the United States.
Phil Schaefer, founder of the 32-year-old Concord Table Tennis Club, feels Sibai's pain.
"It's one of the sports that's been hidden because it's not getting much national coverage," he says. "We're making efforts to get players to compete on a world level, but the infrastructure's not there. There aren't strong leagues for developing players compared to Europe and Asia."
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