Global tensions are rising. Is 'ping-pong diplomacy' the answer?
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Standing 100 feet away from the table, Scott Preiss looked small. The ball and paddle in his hands looked even smaller.
Preiss served the ball, sending the small orb — a little more than 1.5 inches across — in a miraculous arc, bouncing once on his side of the table and hurtling over the net. Point Preiss.
This long-distance serve is just one of Preiss’ trick shots. He can hit the ball behind his back, play with his feet and use a miniature paddle.
“What kind of other 68-year-old guy runs across the top of a ping-pong table or does all these crazy things?” Preiss said.
Preiss coached table tennis at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for 35 years and joined the ranks of table tennis greats in the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017.
Known as the “Ping Pong Man,” Preiss made a name for himself coaching athletes and performing his trick shots to more than 50 million people across 300 exhibitions to promote the sport.
As a table tennis ambassador, Preiss works to connect people through the sport, at home and abroad.
He carries on the legacy of “ping-pong diplomacy,” a Nixon-era strategy to improve foreign relations with China by connecting over a shared interest in the sport. As U.S.-China relations fluctuate through tariff negotiations and the Israel-Iran war, Preiss is focused on a different kind of back-and-forth: table tennis.
“I even offered my services to both [presidential] administrations, the past one and this one, if there's anything I can do for [them] right now,” he said. “If I can just put in what I've learned and help with relations, I'm all for it.”
Preiss has traveled to China 30 times over his career. His most recent trip was in October of 2024, when the Chinese government invited him and his family — his wife is from Shanghai and his son is an elite table tennis player — to visit.
During that visit, Preiss and his son played in the Amity International Table Tennis Tournament, which brought together players from 32 countries to foster foreign relations through table tennis.
“Every time I go over there, I always do a friendship match in some fashion or another,” Preiss said. “The people are very similar, very funny, very much the same. It's just the governments have to work things out. So going over to a couple government meetings, lining up the relationship, that's where I am right now.”
Mao Zedong made table tennis the national sport of China in the 1950s. Since then, it has become one of the most popular sports in the country.
While some Asian and European countries have well-established professional table tennis leagues, the United States didn’t have a national league until 2023.
In the early 1970s, “ping-pong diplomacy” helped popularize the sport in the United States, though it was still a sport more often played in basements than on national broadcasts. Table tennis didn’t become an Olympic sport until 1988.
Preiss first fell in love with the sport in 1972 during a visit to New York, Preiss’ home state, by George Braithwaite, an Guyanese-born table tennis champion and an original member of the USA Table Tennis Ping Pong Diplomacy team.
Out of 100 children, Braithwaite chose 14-year-old Preiss to play against him. Preiss scored 19 points, though he admitted Braithwaite went easier on him in order to get him hooked. (This is a strategy Preiss now uses in his own exhibitions.)
“It changed my life forever. I was an athlete in all sports. But this sport intrigued me. The diversity of this sport,” Preiss said. “After playing the U.S. champion and learning about the sport, all my friends would call me Ping Pong Man. As I travel, they would always introduce me as Ping Pong Man.”
Preiss came home from his match with Braithwaite and told his dad that he wanted to be a professional table tennis player. His dad told him he was crazy.
After he graduated high school, Preiss started traveling and playing table tennis. He lived in Sweden, returned to the U.S., then moved to Beijing in 1986, where he studied table tennis for a year.
While in China, Preiss received a letter from the U.S. Olympic Training Center offering him a job as a full-time table tennis coach. That job brought him to Colorado Springs, where he lives now.
“They sent me all around the world, both as a trainer for the U.S. team and also to promote [the sport] with public exhibitions, mostly corporate exhibitions. The Olympic Committee loved it because it was the sport everybody could relate to,” Preiss said.
Table tennis requires only a few pieces of equipment and a relatively small space to play, making it accessible to casual players.
Table tennis originated in late-1800s England in the homes of wealthy Victorians who played on their dinner tables, using household items for makeshift nets and paddles. Sports equipment manufacturers pounced on the popularity of the game and sold equipment that helped standardize the game.
The International Table Tennis Federation formed in 1926, and the first World Championships for the sport were held in London that same year. Table tennis quickly grew in global popularity, and in the 1950s, Chinese and Japanese players began dominating at international tournaments.
Through his exhibitions, Preiss helped the Olympic Committee sign new sponsors. He then got a job as a spokesperson for Escalade Sports, the sporting goods company that owns the trademark for “ping-pong.”
Table tennis experienced a surge in popularity in Colorado in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online sports betting was legalized around the same time that the pandemic shut down sports leagues around the world. One of the sports that was still being played — and could still be gambled on — was table tennis. Bettors turned to table tennis, and their habits haven’t changed. In January of this year, Coloradans placed $31.7 million in bets on table tennis, trailing only the NBA, NFL and NCAA basketball as the most popular sport to bet on.
Five years ago, Preiss started the Pikes Peak Ping Pong Club. Players in the club range from 7 to 83 years old. Preiss said he often puts those two players against each other. Preiss calls table tennis the great equalizer because age or gender don’t correlate with skill.
“It's very rare that we meet someone of Olympic caliber to coach us. Coach Scott is very patient with the mechanics of the game and how we can get it,” club player Angie Arguna said. She’s been training with Preiss for four years.
Her training has paid off. Arguna, 55, won gold in both her events — the 50 and over Women’s Singles event and the 50 and over Mixed Doubles event — at the Colorado Senior Games in June.
“He designs his coaching to whatever level you are in. And there is no embarrassment. You will get it by the time you're done with Coach Scott,” Arguna said. “It is such an honor and privilege to be playing and working with Coach Scott. He shares his knowledge, he shares his tactics, techniques for free.”
One of Preiss’ most successful table tennis converts is his son, Austin Preiss, who started playing table tennis when he was 3 years old.
Austin Preiss, 31, a former junior table tennis state champion, is a business development manager who plays professional table tennis on the side and performs in exhibitions with his father.
“I commend [my dad] for being able to bring the awareness of the sport kind of globally,” Austin Preiss said. “We've done about 350 exhibitions together, around the world, whether it's for hospitals or private corporate exhibitions, or just for the community. I'm just very happy that he's able to promote the sport in the way he does.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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