Can Table Tennis Save the World?
Few games are as potent as Ping-Pong at bridging divides.
Justin Bookey has played table tennis on all seven continents.
March 26, 2025
It’s often better than a cocktail at loosening people up at a party, better than espresso at providing a 3pm pick-me-up in the office, perhaps even better than more conventional means at bringing adversaries together.
Table tennis is many things to many people. For Justin Bookey, a lawyer turned award-winning marketing strategist, the game is a competitive athletic pursuit (he holds numerous US Open medals), a social lubricant (for a scrawny kid subject to bullying, the game was a way to connect with peers), and a means of understanding performance and the human condition (on this topic, he recently released a book, Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life).
For roughly 100 years, table tennis has been one of the most popular sports across the globe, but it hasn’t had the same following in the United States as abroad. That’s changing. Swanky Ping-Pong lounges are spreading across the country. In 2023, the first professional US league formed, and during the 2024 Olympics the women’s team became a social media darling. Later this year, the actor Timothée Chalamet will play a 1950s Ping-Pong star alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in the highly anticipated film Marty Supreme.
And, of course, it’s become ubiquitous to see a 9-foot platform with a white stripe down the middle in the foyers of modern offices. Perhaps the appeal has to do with paddle sports enhancing motor, memory, and strategy functions, as New York University neural science professor Wendy Suzuki claims. Or maybe it’s because anyone, regardless of fitness, age, temperament, or other traits, can enjoy batting the hollow plastic ball back and forth. Regardless of the reasons, Bookey says, there is something in the rhythm of the rally, the spatial intimacy, and the playful physicality that dissolves egos—and even global tensions.
During the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships, players from the US and People’s Republic of China were photographed in a friendly exchange, which created an opening for a diplomatic breakthrough between the two countries. The turn of events became known as Ping-Pong diplomacy. Bookey attests to the game’s ability to break down barriers, which is why he’s known to hold interviews from across the table. “When you’re playing, all pretenses melt away,” Bookey says, recalling how playing with his father, a World War II veteran and stoic member of the Silent Generation, was among the rare instances they were able to talk freely with each other.
A person’s style of play often reflects their personality. Some, like Bookey, have a more aggressive, fast-action approach, which makes sense if you learned to play as he did, in a cramped basement without much room to maneuver. (That type of unflinching, adversarial disposition also makes for an effective lawyer.) Others hang back farther from the table and look for big-play opportunities. Either way, Bookey says, the power is in knowing and embracing your tendencies.
Just as important is knowing the table that you’re playing at, whom you’re playing across from, and staying focused on executing the play at hand. “Only one point matters—the one I’m playing,” Bookey says.
Photo Credits: Anton Vierietin, Matthias Kulka/Getty Images; Courtesy Justin Bookey
