The players were not particularly well known outside the walls of a Markham warehouse.
Some were among the best athletes in the sport, sages in their world of whacking a white ball just 40 millimetres in diameter across a table. Others were just there to fill a Tuesday evening and maybe make a few friends.
They were playing a sport that’s been described as the great equalizer. Age and size have little bearing inside the Canadian Community Table Tennis Association (CCTTA), where about a hundred people were seen flailing their limbs and flopping their hair across 45 tables. Ping pong balls flew past them, clicking with every bounce around the spacious room.
Table tennis has been booming across Toronto in recent years, with clubs reporting surging memberships and new players joining every week — a trend that predates the recent buzz around “Marty Supreme,” the film inspired by ping pong hustler Marty Reisman. Club organizers say the surge is also tied to a broader post-pandemic appetite for social, easy-to-learn sports — from pickleball to ping pong — though the city hasn’t kept up with the demand for tables.
As the player base grows, the wait times rise as well. Clubs like GTA Pong, which match players with tables around the city, say they gained about four new members a month in 2023, a number that’s nearly reached every day now. Several new clubs have opened in recent years but GTA Pong says its members are still frustrated with the lack of open tables.
“People complain, ‘I have to wait. I literally got to play for 15 minutes and wait, and then take my turn, wait another half an hour, an hour, because there aren’t enough spots,” Hai Huang, the co-founder of GTA Pong, said. “It’s been going on for a while, but it’s gotten worse.”
GTA Pong now hosts about 300 players in its WhatsApp group chat who send messages whenever they want to play, hoping for a partner and a spare table at community centres, apartments or even basements.
Huang says downtown event spaces want more tables but it’s hard and expensive to find real estate in the heart of Toronto.
He remembers playing as a child but wanted to rejoin the sport in 2023 because of a desire to relive his youth and a need for post-pandemic excitement. He found a sense of Zen at the table and a welcoming community.
“It’s the environment that retains you. I walk in, and everyone says hi, and you get to know people.”
He also fell in love with the “flow state” at the table and the “addictiveness” of wanting to improve once he started again, something he believes keeps new players coming back.
The popularity of the sport still boils down to its versatility. There are plenty of highly skilled “table tennis” places in the city that keep coaches on staff, like a couple that have recently opened with the help of Canadian Olympians Eugene Wang and Mo Zhang. But they are mixed with the casual barroom “ping pong” tables that need signs saying not to rest beers on the playing surface.
The wide-ranging appeal is on display at the CCTTA, the largest table tennis club in Canada, which hosts a mix of competitive games, training and friendly rallies on a typical night.
Stanley Hu, the founder, has been a shaman-type figure for table tennis in the city since he founded the club in 2006. He says the growth in numbers started with the sport’s elite, as Toronto has slowly been attracting top international talent over the last 20 years, generating more excitement, which creates more spaces to play.
“You see a lot of different people from everywhere in the world now coming here,” Hu said.
Hu added that the sport can become all-encompassing for the players and the clubs become places where they will stay for hours to socialize. It’s a sport for all ages — with members ranging from six to over 90 at the CCTTA — and all seasons, while Hu says the quick-twitch action keeps his mind sharp.
It’s also a culture where the game will get passed on from generation to generation. Hu’s 10-year-old grandson, Marcus, now spends many of his evenings at the club.
Retirees will populate the warehouse, which has tripled in size since it opened due to demand, during the mornings, with kids coming in to train after school. There’s an overflow many nights, with players waiting for tables on the sidelines.
Like most clubs, the CCTTA matches players by skill level, using a points-based ranking system. The community is mostly welcoming, according to those embedded inside it, though it can be a little intimidating for newcomers.
“Some people, after they get to a certain level, they don’t necessarily want to play with a beginner; they want to improve, they want to test themselves,” Huang said.
The sport has spread from basements and warehouses to slick King Street bars like Spin Toronto, a 12,000-square-foot ping pong bar that was initially influenced by Reisman, the real-life “Marty Supreme.” The success of places like Spin questions whether ping pong can challenge billiards as a casual option for game night.
Owner Ryan Fisher says the boom is part of a larger cultural upswing in racket sports as people are craving different ways to unplug.
“We like to think the culture at our club is just a nostalgic, lighthearted, good time, that can be as high energy as your mood calls for,” Fisher said.
It’s indicative of the broad appeal. The sport can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you find a table.
