MY FIRST-EVER EXPERIENCE AT THE WORLD TABLE TENNIS TOURNAMENT

Sa'eedah Imam

9 months ago

The World Table Tennis Tournament 2023 was held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, featuring both men’s and women’s World Champions in the singles and doubles categories from China, Korea, Slovenia, and Germany.

I wish I never had to start with the stale lines of the struggles of not being a full-time blogger yet, how it’s been a long time since I did a personal post, and how hell of a rollercoaster it’s been for me trying to live this one life while juggling my source of livelihood. I think I already did all that, and now I can get straight into the post.

This was my first experience at any tennis tournament ever, and it happened to be the world championship. My elite friend Shade Poraroh, as I fondly call her, comes up with these fantastic sporting event ideas, and who am I to say No to a noteworthy outing in this frantic work-buried life of mine? We went to the Polo tournament earlier in the year (my first time as well), but I didn’t write about it.

The World Table Tennis Tournament 2023 was held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos. We made it on time to secure the front-row seats, as the turnout was quite large. I won’t lie; I had no idea how things worked for like the first thirty minutes of the game, and my friend’s kids were about to shame my old age with questions. We had an elderly man put us through it, and it was a smooth ride all through.

The tennis tournament featured both men’s and women’s World Champions in the singles and doubles categories from China, Korea, Slovenia, and Germany. I enjoyed the women’s double games more because of how fit and hugely active their participation was. My friend was particularly interested in Dimitrij Ovtcharov, a 34-year-old German world champion whom she had read about before coming for the tournament, He is ranked #10 in the world and plays with a right-handed attack style, however, in the men’s singles championship match, Zhou Qihao of China defeated him by a score of 1-4 (excuse my lame understanding of the sport)

The highlight of the tournament for me was the restless kids; while enjoyable to hang around with, they were also a handful who required a lot of care and attention. We also had a truckload of snacks to munch on throughout the tournament. We weren’t in a rush to leave the sports hall when the whole match was over. We waited back for the raffle draw, and I was sure as the dawn of the day that we were going to win a prize. We heard a ticket number that was nearly identical to ours in symmetry, and I suggested to my friend that it might be a sign. Sure enough, one of our ticket numbers was declared a winner. I headed down to the theatre to pick up the power bank prize. It took some body movement (I wouldn’t call that dancing) and a picture with the MC to receive it.