EASTHAMPTON – If you ask Noel Abbott, playing table tennis is as easy as walking.
“The beauty of this game is everybody can play it,” Abbott said. “You know what I say to people who say ‘I can’t play?’ I say ‘Can you scratch your head?’”
Despite its simplicity, there are a lack of local places to play the sport – other than a childhood friend’s basement. That’s why Abbott hopes to bring table tennis to experts, newcomers and nostalgia-seekers alike at Zing!, the table-tennis club he opened earlier this month in the Keystone Mill at 122 Pleasant St.
Eight tables are lined up in a row in the cavernous former mill space where the walls are painted in two tones of blue. There, Abbott offers playing time to members and non-members, private rentals for events and he will soon open a juice and coffee bar.
“What we have here is a first-class facility in many ways,” Abbott said.
Players can bring a friend, pair up with someone already at the club or even square off against a ball-throwing robot.
Memberships run from $149 to $249 annually, while non-members can play for an hourly rate.
Beginning this week, Zing! will host a women’s open play night on Tuesdays from 7 to 9:30 p.m., and an open play night open to all on Thursdays from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
Abbott, 71, of Easthampton, was a professional tennis player in his 20s and made a living from coaching the sport.
He went on to work as an organizational development consultant for corporate clients before landing at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health Center in Stockbridge. He then served as a Select Board chairman in Rowe and worked for WiredWest, which has worked to bring high-speed internet access to underserved communities in the region.
Though he played table tennis as a child, Abbott’s big moment with the game until 2014.
It was in the basement of his “sweetheart” Priya’s sister that Thanksgiving that he resumed playing.
“When I picked up the paddle, I ignited,” he said. “I just fell in love with it.”
Though table tennis and its big-court sibling share a similar name, Abbott said his years as a tennis pro did not particularly help his pingpong game.
“I had to totally retool my strokes,” he said.
In table tennis, players never turn their bodies – “Think of the paddle as a wall, a moveable wall,” Abbot said.
In tennis, strokes come from the outer parts of the body, while movement in table tennis is centered around the core, he said.
In March 2015, he started importing and selling Donic table tennis tables from Germany at Eastworks, and soon his plan for Zing! started coming together.
In June 2015 he was certified as a coach by the International Table Tennis Federation. For the last year he’s been coaching about six students.
Ernest Virgo, the two-time national table tennis champion of Jamaica, will also be coaching at Zing!, Abbot said.
Abbott took 10 months to create Zing!, including working with a marketing expert to develop the name and color scheme.
He said the venture is funded through personal investment and some help from friends, though he declined to provide specifics.
“I’ve got a year’s worth of sweat equity, all the vision, all the focus and a ton of my own money in this,” he said.
A big part of Abbott’s vision includes offering anybody and everyone a warm welcome to the club, a value that he said is integral to his everyday life as well.
Indeed the accessibility of table tennis is something that attracts him to the game. He said besides baseball, table tennis might just be the quintessential American sport.
“Everybody has played,” he said. “It’s a game of joy.”
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com