Ma Long Wins English Open, Competitive Table Tennis Is Intense

If you're like most Americans, you think of ping pong as a leisurely game played in people's basements. But in much of the rest of the world, table tennis is viewed as a highly competitive sport. And as you'll see if you watch some of the highlights from last weekend's English Open -- described as "the Wimbledon of table tennis" -- the sport can be incredibly intense.

The BBC reports on all the action from the English Open, where top seed Ma Long beat last year's table tennis Olympic gold medalist, Ma Lin, for the English Open men's singles title. Chinese players dominated the competition; Long also won the doubles final with partner Wang Liqin, and Guo Yan beat Liu Shiwen in an all-China women's singles final. Only the victory by Kim Kyung Ah and Park Mi Young of South Korea in the women's doubles final prevented a clean sweep by the Chinese.

We Americans, of course, don't much care about all those English Open results, but we should at least appreciate the intensity of the competition. This isn't the ping pong you played in your basement.