Insurmountable Odds

When I was in high school, my Dad and I would go down to the basement every night after dinner to play ping-pong. It was a fun way for us to bond while having some friendly, spirited competition. As it turned out, it was also an opportunity for me to learn a crucial lesson that's always stayed with me.

My Dad was an excellent ping-pong player who beat me soundly every time we played. There was nothing fancy about his style – he wound up and smashed the ball with wicked speed, using a super-hard paddle he’d had since his youth. His aggressive style and precisely placed shots were too much for me to handle … or so I thought.

One night after he'd gotten the best of me once again, he asked the question I should have been asking myself all along:

“Do you know why you keep losing?”

“Because you’re better than me,” I told him.

“No,” he said. “You’re as good as I am. The problem is, you don’t think you can win. When you’re down by a few points, you give up mentally because you've got it in your head that I’ll beat you.” He paused and then added: “When you start believing you can win, you’ll win.”

A few nights later I beat him for the first time, which made both of us proud. I wish he could have been there to see me when I tasted the real fruits of his advice 12 years later ...

My father's ping-pong paddle, which is my most treasured keepsake from him. Unlike modern paddles with a soft, spongy surface that's built for spin, my Dad's old school paddle from the 1930s has a rock-hard surface that maximizes speed.

Flash forward to 1985.

I was playing in a ping-pong tournament on the island of St. Kitts. I’d reached the finals and found myself facing a tall, obnoxious dude from Texas who was thoroughly humiliating me. He was up 18-3 in the 21-point game and he was laughing at me as I floundered.

The outcome seemed certain. All the big guy needed was three more points and he’d be the champion. I had no margin for error. If I made even one or two mistakes, I’d be the lopsided loser he thought I was.

At that moment, my Dad’s advice came back to me as clearly as the loud THOCK sound made by his hard-faced paddle when it hit the ball. His message was simple but powerful:

“Never give up. If you think you can win, you can do it.”

I took a deep breath, sharpened my concentration and toughened my resolve. Focusing on one point at a time, I took the next point … and the next … and the next. With each point that I clawed back, I watched the smirk slowly fading from my opponent’s face. When the game was over, I’d managed to win 18 points in a row to claim the tournament championship – leaving no trace of a smirk or hint of laughter coming from the other side of the table.

The lesson my father taught me has served me well over the years – in sports, in my career, in my current battle with a rare blood cancer. Even when the odds seem insurmountable, we should never throw in the towel. Even when we feel outmatched, we should maintain the unflappable conviction that we can win. My father taught me that even when we're down 18-3 in life, we can pull off a surprising upset if we keep giving it everything we've got.

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