Olympic table tennis players are fuming over 'very bad' balls

The Olympic table tennis players are fed up. The white balls used in their matches are cracking, crumpling, and breaking. They don't bounce right. They're unpredictable. And they are slightly bigger than the balls used at the London Olympics, meaning they spin less — and less spin gives power hitters an unfair advantage over players that rely on spin.

"I think this ball is very bad," Li Ping of Qatar said after losing a match, although don't call him a sore loser; his opponent, Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany, agreed. The ball "makes it almost impossible to compete," he said.

Every adjustment made to the official table tennis balls used in international matches requires players to recalibrate their muscle memory in order to stay competitive, The New York Times reports. The Olympics are currently using balls provided by D.H.S., a Chinese company that became the official supplier after 2012; the general manager of D.H.S. said the company is "quite satisfied" with the new ball.

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Still, many players are frustrated to find themselves with unpredictable equipment at the highest level of competition. "We practiced with that ball months beforehand to get used to it, but you can never get used to it," Ovtcharov told The New York Times.