HSING HER PRAISES: American 16-year-old table-tennis phenom Ariel Hsing competes at the London Olympics yesterday as Bill Gates (inset), whom Hsing calls “Uncle Bill,” looks on. “Uncle Warren” Buffett missed the Games (AP (2))
LONDON — The opponent is a woman named Xiaoxia Li, and all she carries into the match was the No. 2 seed in the Olympic table-tennis tournament. Li is so good she earned a double-bye, so good that if you print out her resume you need a second package of copy paper. Under occupation, she lists: “athlete.”
Ariel Hsing has no occupation. She is 16 years old, and next year she will be a junior at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, where she collects straight-As, practices table tennis 25 to 30 hours a week and, as most teenage girls do, tries to squeeze enough hours in the week to maintain her friendships, including two of her BFFs, guys named Warren and Bill.
Oh, right. We should mention Warren and Bill’s last names.
Buffett. And Gates. You’ve heard of them, yes?
A few years back, Gates was helping to throw a 75th birthday party for Buffett, an inveterate ping-pong player. He invited the 9-year-old Hsing to the party so the two could play, and she clobbered him. Now she plays at shareholders meetings of Berkshire-Hathaway so she can pulverize the executive board all in the name of corporate bonding.
“Put it this way,” Gates says. “I’ve never won a point off her that she didn’t let me win. And I have an illegal serve.”
This, of course, is different. This is the Olympics, a different weight class than CEOs, COOs and CFOs. This, in the vernacular of a 16-year-old, is OMG.
“It is a little bit daunting, but she is probably more nervous than I am,” Hsing told reporters earlier in the day, after winning her second match of the tournament. “But she has to play against a 16-year-old girl in her first round. That must be a little bit strange for her.”
Was it strange for her?
Well, let’s address the lousy news straight away: Li does what you would expect the world’s second-best player to do to its 114th: She wins the match, advances to the fourth round, sets up a collision course with her countryman Ning Ding.
But she has to bleed for it. She wins the match’s first seven points, wins the first game, seems ready to steamroll her teenaged opponent. But does not. Cannot. Hsing wins the game 11-9, wins the fourth 11-6. The crowd — especially one man in a black baseball hat and an orange shirt — is roused.
“You’re doing great!” Gates yells from his seat just in front of the broadcast tribune.
Tied at 2-2, Li wins the final two games and the match, the two shake hands, and the ExCeL Center is charged and charmed all at once.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be nervous for another tournament again,” Hsing says.
Uncle Warren isn’t here; his treatment for prostate cancer kept him in Omaha. But Uncle Bill is. At match’s end he seeks his young friend out, offers a warm embrace.
“You made your country proud of you,” Gates says. “And you made me unbelievably proud of you.”
“I had fun,” Hsing says.
Clearly, she is unbothered by this, or by Li. You know what pressure is? Pressure is maintaining those straight-As so she can keep playing table tennis. That’s the deal she makes with her parents, Michael Hsing and Xin Jaing, Chinese immigrants and former players who know well that back home, a prodigy like Ariel would have been told to choose sport over scholarship at age 11 or 12.
The path, one suspects, that was scripted out for Xiaoxia Li.
“I love this game so much,” Hsing will say a few minutes later. “And this was so great for me. I was riding on the bus today with someone who won a gold medal and she let me touch it and I thought: ‘I can still do this.’ And I really did believe.”
So did her friends, the Billionaire Boys Club. Buffett sent his regards from the States. Gates did it from the 10th row. When you’re 16 years old and you have names like that on your speed dial? How tough can playing ping-pong against Xiaoxia Li really be?
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com