Table Tennis

The new sports drama "As One" tells the story of how in 1991, for the purposes of the World Table Tennis Championships, North Korea and South Korea reunited, putting forward a single team in the hopes of preventing the Chinese from winning a ninth consecutive title. (What does it say about the state of international geo-politics that in a story featuring North Korea, China can still function as an all-purpose villain?) The top female players from each nation (Korean stars Ha Ji-won and Bae Doo-na)

Anybody wanting to discover the secret of China's success at table tennis need only meet Li Zhuoming, a 10-year-old prodigy. With a paddle in his hand, he is bursting with explosive energy; off the court he is uncommonly poised for a pre-adolescent. He holds his 4-foot-11 body erect when he speaks and makes eye contact. Except when wiping the beads of sweat dripping under his crisp bush cut, he doesn't fidget. Table tennis, known as pingpang in China, isn't a game for the inattentive.

As niche games go, table tennis in the United States does not yet have the cachet -- or the big stakes -- of televised poker. But to hundreds of aficionados who descended on this capital of long odds and sweet dreams last week for the USA Table Tennis Assn. national championships, pingpong is the sport of choice. To hear them talk, table tennis is the ultimate game of merit in which the young can play the old, the able-bodied the disabled, and all ethnic groups seem to excel.

There were nothing but smiles after Rey Domingo and David Sakai posted an American sweep at the National Seniors Open table tennis tournament at Leisure World Sunday. Domingo grinned because he defeated Sakai, 21-19, 21-15, 21-15, in the championship match of the over-40 singles division. Sakai beamed after upsetting top-seeded Shi-Li Min of China in the semifinals, making the final against Domingo anticlimactic.

First comes the inquiring look. Then the questions. Always innocent. Always wrong. Carol Davidson of Studio City and Kim Gilbert of Van Nuys look like athletes. They dress like athletes--everything from warmup suits to sweat bands to workout bags. So people, particularly here at the U.S. Olympic Festival, want to know. Are you a volleyball player? Which track and field event are you entered in? You're in softball, right? "A lot of people think I'm in judo," Gilbert says. "I don't know why judo."

Goodness, gracious, there's no greatness in "Balls of Fury," a lifeless pingpong comedy that ricochets from one flat gag to the next. The only novelty it can boast of is that it's a sports spoof without Will Ferrell. Energetic stage star Dan Fogler, who earned a truckload of hardware for his performance in the Broadway musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," finds himself in a real lemon of a vehicle for his debut as a cinematic leading man.

Carol Davidson of North Hollywood and Lan Vuong of Reseda both earned medals in table tennis Saturday. But neither got the one she wanted most. In women's doubles, Davidson and partner Takako Trenholme of Minneapolis fell to Li Ai of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Kim Gilbert of Los Angeles, 12-21, 21-16, 21-19, in the gold-medal match. Vuong and partner Kerry Terrel of Richland, Wash., defeated Jane Chui of Bedford, Mass., and Nadine Groenig of Phoenix, Ariz., 21-12, 21-9, for the bronze medal.

With all the grace of a teenage athlete, Nancy Kellner glides in front of her partner and drills a backhand winner deep into the right corner of the tennis table, catching her flat-footed rival off guard. "Nice shot, Nancy," her impressed opponent conceded Saturday, collecting the bright orange ball after it ricocheted off a back wall and tossing it over the net for the next serve.

The Iraqi army came to Kuwait four days before Michelle Mateljan of Studio City, Calif., was to fly out for a vacation in Spain. "I was so bummed," she said Tuesday. Now safe in Bahrain, Mateljan recounted her ordeal, including a final scare at the last Iraqi checkpoint at the Saudi Arabian border. "There were six or seven soldiers, and we thought, 'This is it,' " the 22-year-old brunette recalled over a plate of pasta. "So what happens? They gave us a can of beans and some chocolate bars.