Creaking from one decrepit ankle to the other and groaning as every weary, sinew stretched in vain to reach the tiny ball, it's abundantly clear time is not a friend of this player.
And with beads of sweat trickling from a graying brow now pooling under his eyes, he curses his more nimble opponent.
Anyway, enough about me. Let's, instead, talk about Richmond's 75-year-old Canadian Men's Over-60 table tennis champion and how a foolish reporter's bravado led to him challenging Chang Poh to a wee game of ping-pong at the Bridgeport Sports Club.
In my defence, I hadn't picked up a table tennis paddle in anger for more than 20 years.
But having won a family holiday camp tournament at the age of 13 - I even had my own bat and zipped cover - I was confident I could live with this old timer.
Mistake number one. Poh, fresh from his gold medal at the nationals in Edmonton, barely moved a muscle as I scrambled from one side of the table to the other, trying to react to the ridiculous spin the granddad was fizzing onto the little orange sphere.
Having warmed to the task, I did manage to scrape a few points together by the third game. But I'm fairly certain Poh was just keeping me amused; for the fun of it.
"Wow, good shot," he said, in a surprised tone. I might have just had my rear-end handed to me - table tennis style - but I'd forgotten how much fun the sport was and it won't be another 20 years before I pick up the paddle again.
Rough end of the table
Born in a small British colony in Malaysia, Poh first started playing table tennis, around age 12, at the Chinese school he attended. "I think there were two tables there," he recalled.
After immigrating to Edmonton in 1967, Poh had a hard job of maintaining his love affair with the sport, with table tennis not high on the agenda of Albertans in the late 1960s.
"I had to really go and seek it out; it wasn't easy," said Poh. "And the tables were a little bit rough; kind of thrown together and sloping in the middle."
After sliding west to B.C. and Richmond in '73, Poh still had his work cut out to source any genuine table tennis community, commuting to Strathcona in Vancouver's Chinatown to play.
"We finally started up a little club (in Richmond) at James Whiteside elementary and played there several nights a week," he said.
"And we played there until this club (Bridgeport Sports) opened in 1999.
"This is my new home."
Rivals sick of the sight of Poh
Poh confessed to playing about 12-15 hours of table tennis every week and will "play anybody and everybody" for as long as they want to.
Not bad for a grandfather in his mid-70s who - as well as grabbing gold in the over-60s nationals two weeks ago and been crowned B.C. champion several times - also bronzed in the over-50s in Edmonton. In the 2008 nationals, contenders in the over-40s, over-50s and over-60s sections must have been sick of the sight of Poh, who swept to gold in all three age groups in Halifax.
Suffice to say, Poh lives and breathes table tennis, and would have it for breakfast, if it was edible.
In fact, the only time in his life Poh stopped playing table tennis was when his son Dan, now 40, and daughter, Debbie, now 45, played the sport for the junior national and provincial teams respectively. "I stopped to watch them playing," smiled Poh, who said his wife, Winnie, would rather play badminton.
However, Poh's passion has yet to rub off on his 10-year-old grandson, Trevor.
"He'd rather do more high risk sports, such as snowboarding; he's not been bitten by the table tennis bug yet!" Asked why he adores such a simple sport so much, Poh smiled, "I will play anyone, I don't care who. And the more people try to beat me, the harder I try.
"Absolutely anybody can play, that's the beauty of the sport."
