Was it all just a bad dream? The last fifteen months have felt more like fifteen years, adapting to the unpleasant realities of the deadliest pandemic in a century. For a seeming eternity, we have struggled to breathe in uncomfortable masks. Worse, players and spectators alike have been denied competitive table tennis, which for nearly a billion of us worldwide is tantamount to oxygen. Perhaps nowhere in the Unites States was the lockdown felt as acutely as in Pleasantville, New York's Westchester Table Tennis Center (WTTC). There, manager Robert Roberts (pictured, left) and owner Will Shortz (right) have grown the club into the nation's largest dedicated table tennis venue. With monthly four-star USA Table Tennis tournaments offering thousands of dollars in prizes, the WTTC has become a veritable table tennis mecca. Two of the club's most devoted hajis are New Jersey's Sharon Alguetti (pictured, center left) and Pleasantville's own Kai Zhang (center right). Between them, the two young men already own the lion's share of the WTTC's tournament titles spanning the last decade. Now, after the easing of pandemic restrictions, Zhang and Alguetti were back for more at the WTTC June Open, the club's first full-fledged monthly open 18-event tournament since February 2020. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Alguetti and Zhang met in Sunday's finals. Alguetti took the first two games and was eyeing a sweep, up 7-5 in the third, when Zhang roared back with a 7-0 run to pull within one game. Interestingly, the loser of each of the three first games blew a late lead, with Zhang stalling at 9-8 in the first and 10-9 in the second. The fourth game hung in the balance at 7-all, and with it the match. Alguetti kept his foot on the gas, racing to triple match point at 10-7. Zhang did his best to preserve the late comeback storyline, pulling within one at 10-9. Serving, Alguetti's third-ball banana flick forced an error from Zhang, whose forehand sailed long. With the 3-1 win, Alguetti pocketed the $2,000 first prize, nearly enough to pay all the tolls back to New Jersey. With such familiar faces in the finals, the WTTC regulars might have wondered if the nightmarish last year really happened. For all involved, and especially Sharon Alguetti, the sense of déjà vu was a dream come true.

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