Once upon a time there was a time when the ping pong attracted tens of thousands of spectators at his matches. An era in which a New York Jewish kidslender and frail, he discovered his vocation. “I was 12 when I learned to play ping pong,” Reisman writes in his autobiography. «From that day on, I had something that really interested me. It involved anatomy, chemistry, physics and, if a person had imagination, even astronomy.”
Thus the legend was born. Marty Reisman he became one of the most famous table tennis players ever, famous for his exploits on and off the playing field – such as the 5 bronze medals at the World Cup. And he is the one who inspired it Marty Supremethe 2025 film directed by Josh Safdie which tells the histrionic figure of this New York ping pong player who tries, at all costs, to feed his boundless ambition. But what is true? In this article we retrace his life.
From poor New York comes a great ambition
Marty Reisman left us in December 2012. Today he would probably be the happiest person in the world to see all this media attention on him thanks to the film. On the other hand, he has always been great first and foremost exhibitionista showman who had found his talent in ping pong escape route and his stage.
Born in New York in 1930Marty grows up in Lower East Side. At the time it was a difficult neighborhood: located in the south of Manhattan, it became a center of immigration, in particular for Eastern European Jews, but also for Italians and Germans. As seen in the film, the accommodations are modest and cramped, with no lighting and shared bathrooms. It is there that Marty grows up, initially alone with his mother who divorced his father.
Then comes the shock. The encounter with that world: ping pong. Referring to when he picks up a racket and starts to play, in a video interview he declared: «I fall into a state of hypnosis, it almost becomes a euphoric experience. I don’t struggle, it’s as if I were gliding and floating.”
Between the 13 and 15 years oldMarty makes his way into local tournaments. Start dating Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Cluban underground club (a sort of speakeasy) where you don’t just play: you bet. And a lot. Marty is no exception, it’s in his blood: his father is an avid gambler who supports his son in this activity, often going so far as to bet money on his victories.
For this reason Marty moves in with his father, who is the only one who believes in his dream and his passion, ping pong. In fact, that game represents his life for Marty only escape route. A mental escape, because it allows him to enter that competitive “trance”, but also an economic emancipation. In his autobiographical book (The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler) he writes: «I was born with this ability, but then I developed it. I was convinced that it was my only way out of my condition, to go towards recognition and wealth».
Ping pong becomes entertainment
Marty’s skill slowly becomes a profession. The competitive activity is in fact booming: between 1946 and 2002 Reisman wins overall 22 top titlesincluding two US Opens and one British Open. He also won five bronze medals at the World Championships: the first in 1948 in the team event, then three more in 1949 (singles, teams and mixed doubles) and the last in 1952.
But Marty wasn’t just a great sportsman. He was one of the first to mixing sport with pure entertainment. He took care of his image obsessively: his slim and elongated body became famous thanks to the opening shows of the matches of the Harlem Globetrotters. Marty put on a show using pans instead of rackets and inventing circus stunts. His famous trick was in which he broke a cigarette, positioned on the other side of the court, by hitting it with a ping pong ball.
With this profession he traveled the world, over the years Fifties and Sixtiesin which table tennis attracted tens of thousands of spectators, also attracted by that champion, who hit the ball with force, taking advantage of his elastic and nervous physical leverage.
The sensational defeat of 1952: the physics of the game changes forever
There is a crucial event in Marty’s racing career, also filmed in the film (although set in another country and in a different context): the World Championships in Bombayin India, in 1952. Reisman is the favourite, he is already a champion and thinks he has victory in his pocket. In the draws, a little-known Japanese opponent comes out for him: Hiroji Satoh. It won’t be a problem for him to beat him.
And instead, sensationally, Marty loses. How is this possible? The secret was in Satoh’s racket. Up until that point, players had used so-called hardbat: wooden rackets with a thin layer of speckled rubber or sandpaper. Satoh was instead allowed to use a weapon that, Reisman wrote, “would have made table tennis a different sport.”
The Japanese’s racket was covered in almost two centimeters of foam rubber (an experimental technology at the time). What is standard in professional racing today was science fiction at the time: it allowed unthinkable levels of speed and control. The more Marty hit the ball with force and precision, the more the ball came back to him with strange and unexpected trajectories. Satoh won the World Cup and table tennis changed forever.
The never-ending career of Marty Reisman
Despite the shock of defeat at the World Championships in Bombay, Reisman had a long and successful competitive career. His most incredible record came in 1997: at the age of 67 years oldreturned to the circuit and won theHard Bat Nationals (the “old style” U.S. Racquets Championship), becoming the oldest player to win a national title in a racquet sport. This was just the apotheosis of such an intense and daring sporting life.
Between history and film: what’s true?
But then, what is true and what is false in the film Marty Supreme, directed by director Josh Safdie? Obviously it is a fictionalized story, “inspired” by his events. The New York setting is real, as is Marty’s physical appearance, his biting irony and probably also his mixture of arrogance and arrogance.
The rivalry with the Japanese player is also based on real events, although the historic match took place in Bombay. Then there is a very strong episode in the film which is also told in Marty’s autobiographical book: the friendship with the Polish pong champion Alex Ehrlich, who had been a prisoner in the concentration camps. Marty tells the anecdote, also reported in the film, linked to defusing bombs, when the Pole sprinkled himself with honey found in a beehive in the middle, to feed his fellow prisoners.
In short, Marty Reisman’s autobiography is full of anecdotes that are part of a life always lived to the limit, where ambition and that pinch of “genius and recklessness” they allowed a poor boy from New York to become a legend.
