A champion ping-pong player will lead an eight-woman, four-man Japanese team on their three-day trip here in the CNMI for the upcoming Big Ball Tournament organized by the Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association.<\/p>\n
MATTA is currently finalizing the venue to hold the event, which is slated from Oct. 9 to 11.<\/p>\n
MATTA president Steve Lim and tourney coordinator Budhi Gurung said they are working on the possibility of holding it on Tinian, which was the original plan.<\/p>\n
MATTA decided to move it to Saipan but Lim is still hoping that Tinian will host the games.<\/p>\n
The 12 players from Japan, Lim said, are the Ambassadors of Big Ball.<\/p>\n
He said they have been promoting this sport for quite a while.<\/p>\n
Lim said Big Ball is gaining popularity in the United States and in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is already popular in Asia, like in Japan, and Korea,\u201d he said referring to the use of a larger 40mm table tennis ball.<\/p>\n
Manufacturers particularly in Asian countries like Japan, Korea, and China theorized that the use of such kind of ball could improve a player\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
The 40mm ball weighs in at 2.7 grams, compared to the old 38mm ball at 2.5 grams. <\/p>\n
Accordingly, the bigger size makes the ball travel four to eight percent slower and reduces the effect of spin on the ball about 10 to 13 percent. <\/p>\n
Proponents of the game also theorized that the intent was to make the rallies longer and in turn make the game more exciting for players and spectators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A champion ping-pong player will lead an eight-woman, four-man Japanese team on their three-day trip here in the CNMI for the upcoming Big Ball Tournament organized by the Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}