Ball Size

Harry Unknown Asked 16 years ago

I recently bought a pack of ping pong balls and realized that they were much larger than my old ones. I found out that they were 40mm unlike my previous 38mm. Which one should I use? Why did they change the size of the ball?

Jeff Plumb Answered 16 years ago

Hi Harry,

You should be using the 40mm balls. The size of the Table Tennis balls changed back in 2000. The idea behind the change was that a larger ball would travel through the air slower and that would help increase the length of the rallies in Table Tennis. Also a larger ball would be easier to see on TV.

It will seem strange using the larger ball only for a couple of days. It doesn't take much to get used to the new size.