Myrtle Beach’s Massey brings home national table tennis title

Randy Massey isn’t the most talented or highest-ranked player among the 30 or so members of the Myrtle Beach Table Tennis Club.

But he’s the only one who can call himself a national champion.

The Myrtle Beach resident is evidence that desire can be hard to quantify.

A win and runner-up finish at the 2015 U.S. Nationals in December in Las Vegas reflect his competitiveness and willingness to chase titles.

“I’ve always been a competitive sportsman,” Massey said. “It’s a passion, I guess, because I’m the only one in the club who goes and plays in national tournaments.”

Massey won the Under 1500 Hardbat national championship and finished second in the Under 1700 Sandpaper division.

Similar to tennis, table tennis has an amateur ratings system through USA Table Tennis (USATT) based on performances in tournaments. The higher the rating, the more skilled the player. The lowest player rating is 75 and the highest is about 2500.

The Under 1700 division was the only amateur Sandpaper competition held at the 770-player Nationals, while amateur Hardbat competition took place in the Under 1500, Under 1800 and Under 2000 divisions.

Massey, a retired 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran and occupational therapist, has chased titles in several national championships. He was a semifinalist in the 2011 and 2012 U.S. Nationals, which feature only U.S. players, and finalist in the 2013 U.S. Open, which is open to international players.

He plans to participate in both tournaments again this year, and he intends to soon add matches in the most popular form of table tennis involving a smooth sponge paddle.

“I want to be a champion in the Sandpaper division, I want to be a champion in the smooth division and Hardbat – all three of them – at the U.S. Nationals or the U.S. Open,” said Massey, who uses the conventional American hand-shake grip on the paddle. “That’s my goal.”

Before joining the Myrtle Beach Table Tennis Club in 2009, Massey hadn’t played in decades.

His father was in the Army so he lived in several places growing up, but he was born in Hawaii and attended the Kamehameha honors military high school in Hawaii for four years before attending Brigham Young University and earning a bachelor’s degree and the first of his four master’s degrees.

He played table tennis in high school, as his dormitory had a table in its recreation room, and he and one other player were the best in the dorm. “I was really good at it,” said Massey, who ran track and cross country in high school and was also a wrestler.

He regularly played racquetball and tennis in the Air Force, where he was a behavioral scientist and also spent time as an assistant professor of aerospace studies, a personnel program officer and education training officer, and represented his bases in Air Force tennis tournaments. He gave up tennis after being discharged in 1990 and continued with racquetball.

“I gave up tennis because I didn’t like going out in 100-degree weather and running on the hot court,” Massey said, “and you’re prone to more injuries because of the running, high impact and tennis elbow.”

Massey’s parents were already in Myrtle Beach when he moved to the area around 2004, and they are still here, along with his sister. He said he was an occupational therapist in the Florence school district and at several area nursing homes for a few years before he fully retired.

Unable to find racquetball opponents on the Grand Strand, he joined the Myrtle Beach Table Tennis Club after a few years. “Somebody happened to tell me there was a tennis table club that meets on the [former Air Force] base,” Massey said, “and I thought about my high school years and thought, ‘You know, I was pretty good.’ I really enjoyed it and it’s similar to racquetball because you need quickness and fast reflexes.”

The club meets from 5-9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays at the City of Myrtle Beach Base Recreation Center, and Massey struggled at first.

“I thought I was pretty good and I went over there and everybody beat me,” Massey said. “It had been maybe 30 or 40 years since I played and back then they were using different equipment. I had to start off basically at the bottom because many of these players have been playing 20 or 30 years and they’re good.”

Massey has developed into one of the club’s better players. It’s best player is Corey McElveen, whom Massey called his mentor and pseudo-coach with an estimated rating of 2000. Massey has forced a fifth game in a best-of-five match against McElveen but has never defeated him.

“Randy is very competitive,” MBTTC president Mike Dorman said. “He loves to play and he loves to win.”

Massey wants to share his table tennis knowledge through weekly periods of free instruction through the club, possibly finding a player who will accompany him to national tournaments.

This story was originally published January 29, 2016 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach’s Massey brings home national table tennis title."