"I wanted the North Koreans to realise that Americans aren't their enemies," he would explain to the New York Times. Green was the only American athlete at the Pyongyang Open that year, and found himself placed in a round-robin group with a Chinese player and two North Koreans. I just wanted to do it but I didn't know what I was going to do." "Everything just clicked in my head right there. In 1971, President Nixon, America established relations with China through what? Ping-pong. "And I saw North Korea, Pyongyang, and I was like: 'That's it. "I was like what can I do that's greater than me," Green recalled in his BBC interview.
PING PONG RACKET PRO
He would play a few Pro Tour events each year, not all, and then in 2015 a tournament caught his eye. "You love ping pong."Ī first triumph finally came in the preliminary round of the 2009 Korea Open, when he beat Jonathan Bizaku of Congo 4-0 in a round-robin match.īy now back in New York, Green dabbled in music - he released a table-tennis-centric hip-hop song in 2013 called "A Game Nobody Knows (Ping Pong Song)" – and played a part in promoting new table tennis social clubs. "This is the sport of love – you want to win so bad, but you're there because you love it," he explained to the New York Times. All the while, he would enter more ITTF Pro Tour (now World Table Tennis) events, yet never tasting any sort of success.
He spent months between tournaments training in Asia, including in Japan where he met his wife. He was going all over the world, being followed by camera crews, and had a sponsorship from Rockstar, the video game company. He did not win a game in a singles match in an ITTF event until the 2005 US Open, when he lost in his preliminary-round clash 4-1.īut the defeats didn't matter. That repeated itself at the 2003 Croatian Open, 2003 Japan Open, 2004 Croatian Open, and on and on it went. He lost both his round-robin games in straight games. In 2001, Green played his first International Table Tennis Federation event as a global pro – the German Open. And now I play ping pong and I'm travelling to all these countries in the world." "I was really really good at basketball, basketball never took me outside of the city less outside of the country," Green said. That man went on to suggest Green move to Germany, a European powerhouse in the sport, to further his education in table tennis. "It was just me escaping, just not trying to be there and that's how the ping pong thing that I didn't like kind of saved my life."įrom $20 playing partner to international proĪt the club, a man offered to pay him $20 to be a playing partner, and did not flinch even after a gun fell out of his backpack. "You went in the early morning at six, you go to practice, and then you stay later at school to practice and then by the time you come home you're kind of tired and you're very numb to all the craziness that’s going on in your home.
"Playing sports and school would take a lot of my time," he remembered to Sportshour.
Green ended up immersing himself in improving, as he sought to keep away from his abusive stepfather as much as he could. "I didn't know Black kids played ping pong," he said. "So I see some kids playing ping pong, and I was trying to be a bully, so I went over there and I said: 'I want to play.' This kid gave me the racket and I was trying to hit him with the ball just to be mean, but the ball went on the table and the kid was like, 'great shot, do you play? There’s a ping pong club.' The athlete in me wanted to see if it was really for real and I went down to his place he told me about and there were people playing!"Īt that club, Green would relate to the New York Times, he found immigrants from the Caribbean practising. I was planning on shooting pool and I got a little upset that I lost. "I was in gangs, guns, a lot of violence at a young age so I had anger management issues. "This sport came to me by total mistake," he recalled to the BBC. While sport was an escape from an abusive home life growing up – "I grew up in the projects, we were a very poor family," he told the BBC "My mum and my dad divorced when I was one and then my mum remarried an abuser" – it looked like the young Wally would do what many of his peers ended up doing, falling down a rabbit hole of gang violence.īasketball, volleyball, and tennis were all sports he played to pass the time, but this sport that appeared to be the domain of his Asian counterparts was of no interest to Green, who is Black American. Green was never into table tennis, or ping-pong as he still refers to the sport. The beauty of Table Tennis An escape from home