I am not one of life’s natural tennis players. At High School, I have clear and haunting memories of tennis lessons which consisted of hitting back the balls that were shot at me by The Ball Machine. The Ball Machine always struck me as a somewhat un-child-friendly contraption which was the equivalent of having a cannon fired at you, for a solid minute, with merely a dilapidated piece of wood and string with which to defend yourself. I recall being rebuked for instinctively hitting the balls as far as possible, leading my eleven year old self to patiently explain that my desire to not let one of them break my nose outweighed my wish to learn the art of tennis. Also, I think I felt that if I hit all of the balls far enough, they’d all be lost and that would be the end of The Ball Machine’s career.

Table-Tennis, on the other hand, is a whole other ball game (Oh please; like I was going to let that pun go to waste). It requires less power but each player should exhibit similar skills of rapid reactions, clear strategy and co-ordination. In an ideal world. Possibly not in the world that my companion and I entered when we visited Bounce in Holborn last weekend, but we had a marvellous time all the same!

It’s always a good sign when a venue is busy on a Monday and Bounce was packed - but never crowded - from 6:30pm onwards with games ranging from singles to doubles to even groups of 6+. The intention of the players seemed to range from casual Monday night fun to the deathly competitive, where I wondered if a wager of sorts had been placed on the game with a prize of Player A’s car / house/ wife.

The atmosphere of mine and my guest’s game, however, was heavily weighted towards the friendly, less competitive sphere. It would have to be, considering I was playing against someone who did, at times, seem to think that we were playing actual tennis considering the height at which he served back some of the balls. Not that I can really judge considering, at one point, I would proceed to hit the ball so strongly,  it flew out of our little area and directly into the poor, unassuming woman standing across the room. Our performance may also have been marginally inhibited by the consumption of some delectable cocktails. In fact, yes, I’d also like to go ahead and blame the cocktails on every other single shot that I missed. Were it not for Mr Jack Daniel, I’m sure we could have reached a rally somewhere up in the hundreds. Ahem.

Don’t let yourself be limited to just an ordinary game of singles either. Many other options can be explored such as opposite-handed ping pong, one eye covered ping pong (Pirate Ping-Pong), or even Ping Pong with two balls simultaneously. Although the latter is really best attempted when you have warned your opponent that this is what you are going to do; otherwise, when balls start flying at them, they start to have Ball Machine flashbacks and begin flailing their racquet wildly…

After expending a significant amount of energy in the actual game, we were more than ready to tuck into some delicious pizza courtesy of the venue’s open counter restaurant. Opting for the Pork and Fennel with plum tomatoes and the Mozzarella and San Danielle ham with rocket, we had a feast indeed and I was relieved that we had opted to eat post-game. Had we had consumed such delicacies pre-game, I fear I would have been so full, I would not have been able to exhibit the energy that the game so requires, instead standing statuesque still and hitting the ball only if it came within the range of my arm span. More cocktails accompanied the pizza rounding off a highly enjoyable and heartily recommended evening.

Lastly, my exuberantly young-at-heart companion displayed utter delight and a desire to play with the pincer-like device Bounce’s employees use to collect stray balls from around the room. So, even if you have (somehow!) not been swayed by the ping pong craze, why not go, have a pizza and some cocktails and play with that instead?

Bounce is located in the Holborn area and reservations can be made here.