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Not Just a Pretty Face. European Table Tennis Star.Don't Call It Ping-Pong. Chicago College Student. Shelf Full of Trophies. Can She Sell the Sport in the U.S.? Sign Up for a Free
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Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune; 3/24/2006
Mar. 24--On Saturday afternoons at Union Station's Multiplex fitness center, Biljana "Biba" Golic gives a clinic in table tennis.
For free. All comers welcome.
Golic is among the five best women table tennis players in the country. She was a three-time national champion in her native Yugo-slavia. In the past year, she has been featured in Time and Sports Illustrated -- which noted her golden good looks and her moniker, "the Anna Kournikova of table tennis."
 And, she's favored to win the national collegiate title April 8-10 in Ft. Worth.
So the fact that she's willing to teach any slob who strolls into the Multiplex is really something -- tantamount to, say, Dee Brown showing up in downtown Champaign every Saturday to mentor people on their free throws. As if.
"When I was growing up, I thought, 'I never want to be a coach,' " Golic said, laughing. "But now I like working with people, because I can really help them. It's a pretty complicated sport. A lot of people say, 'You just stand at the table and just hit it.' Well, that's not the case."
The demands of table tennis became painfully clear at one of Golic's recent clinics. Putting a man named Ben Ritter through a drill -- one forehand, one back-hand, one down the middle -- she explained, "This is basically just so he can develop his strokes."
The ball became a blur of white. Golic's ponytail swung like a metronome. Ritter, sporting a white head-band, began to sweat. Ten minutes later, he called for a rest.
While Golic picked up the dozens of balls littering the floor, I approached Ritter, who was bent over, hands on his knees.
Sure, he looked tired -- but I figured he could speak.
"Could you say your name into my tape recorder?" I asked.
Ritter shook his head. "Two minutes," he said, gasping for air.
When Golic isn't sending middle-age recreational players into cardiac arrest, she practices, attends classes at Harold Washington College -- and helps promote the sport for Killerspin, a Chicago-based table tennis manufacturing and marketing company formed in 2001 by Robert Blackwell Jr.
Blackwell's betting that sex can sell table tennis -- and Golic, who he sponsors, is his ace in the hole.
"It's such a great sport, but for a sport to be popular it has to be marketed properly," said Blackwell, a self-described "serial entrepreneur"who in 2001 launched Chicago-based Killerspin, a table-tennis manufacturing and promotion company.
"I found out that 300 million people play table tennis worldwide," said Blackwell, who also owns EKI, an IT consulting firm. "But in America, no one could name a brand. So I thought if we could apply American sports-marketing techniques to table tennis, we could really have a good company."
Killerspin makes mod-looking tables with names such as "Killerspin RAD"; produces thousands of hours of table-tennis programming shown on ESPN2 (7,000 hours in 2004); and sponsors top international players such as Golic.
'Something special about her'
"I saw a lot in her personality, her skill, her attractiveness," Blackwell said. "I just thought there was something special about her, and it turns out I was right."
Growing up in Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, Golic learned table tennis from her father, Pregdrag, a tobacco company executive. By age 18, Golic was a three-time national champion and had competed throughout Europe and Asia.
After graduating high school, Golic played professionally, first for a prestigious team in her hometown of Coka, Serbia. The war kept her from competing at international events for two years, until Serbia became a recognized country. When it did, she played on its national team.
Then came the call: an invitation to play in Germany's Bundesleague -- the most competitive table tennis league in Europe. In terms of money and prestige, it was like jumping from a farm club to Major League Baseball.
"They liked my style of playing," Golic said. "It's not a style typical of women. It's more similar to men, more aggressive, a lot of spin."
She competed for a team near Stuttgart, while also traveling with the Serbian national team. Killerspin had signed her by this time, so she often competed in its clothes.
But Golic had a dream beyond smashing little white balls. "I had always wanted to learn English," she said. "I wanted to study and play at the same time, but with the tempo of competing in the Bundesleague, I couldn't. I was basically living table tennis."
With the help of an alumnus, Golic landed a full scholarship in 2003 at Texas Wesleyan, which boasts the most successful collegiate table-tennis team in the U.S. Before Golic had learned to say "howdy," her plane had landed in Ft. Worth.
"I remember that it was so hot," she recalled, laughing. "I couldn't breathe."
She promptly won the 2004 national collegiate title, playing for Texas Wesleyan, but she yearned to live in a more cosmopolitan city. At the same time, Blackwell recalled, "[her team] dressed her in the ugliest clothes, and I couldn't take it anymore."
Don't get the wrong impression: Blackwell is no sexist pig; he's a socially conscious businessman who once tried to develop housing on the South Side that would be free to honor-roll black college students in exchange for mentoring local elementary and high school students.
But at heart, he's an entrepreneur, with a nose for what sells. And the boxy outfits didn't cut it.
"I thought table tennis had a lot to offer and that Biba could be a good spokesperson," Blackwell explained. "But if she looks like she's on the East German team in the 1970s, that's not going to cut it."
Move to Chicago
So in January 2005, Golic gave up her scholarship at Texas Wesleyan and moved to Chicago. She took second in the National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships that April, playing for Illinois Institute of Technology -- which she attended for a semester before transferring to Harold Washington.
"That was an upset," said Larry Hodges, editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine. "She should win it this year."
Most days, Golic and a small band of Killerspin-sponsored players (including the top U.S. male player and the Panamanian national champion) can be found at the Multiplex fitness center, practicing on Killerspin tables that they erect in a series of rooms otherwise used for aerobics classes.
"I practice about an hour and a half a day," she says. "and travel for promotional events."
A lot of them. In January, she held a clinic at Disney World for a crowd of Girl Scouts. In December, she ran Killerspin clinics at Mayor Daley's Holiday Sports Festival.
Blackwell's push of the Biba Brand has raised some eyebrows. Why promote her over the one player who deserves promotion over all others: the formidable Chinese-star-turned-American-citizen Gao Jun -- who has been the No. 1 woman in the U.S. for seven straight years?
"It's always a controversy: Should [table tennis] be promoting someone like Biba, or someone like Gao Jun, who ... is the best woman player in modern U.S. history?" says Hodges.
Because most table-tennis players don't inspire idolatry the way Golic does. One man who came to see Golic play brandished a sign pleading, "Marry Me Biba." Fans flock to get her autograph or e-mail her for signed pictures. "When I hear that boys have posters of me in their rooms, I don't know what to think," she said. "I'm flattered, I guess."
As for Killerspin's success in popularizing the game, Hodges says Blackwell has it half right. "You need to promote it to the masses by getting it on TV, which he's done, and he's also doing it with a celebrity sort of player like Biba. But then you have to develop programs at the club level, so that when people see it on TV, they can go to their local club and give it a try. There are about 300 sanctioned clubs in the U.S., but only about 10 percent of them have something for the new player."
Golic is doing her part, with her Saturday afternoon clinic at the Muliplex.
lhahn@tribune.com
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Biba by the numbers
Age: 28
Height: 5 feet 2 inches
Weight: 117 pounds
National titles: 6
Yugoslav singles (2)
mixed doubles (2)
team (2)
Collegiate titles: 4
2004 National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships. Winner in singles, doubles, mixed doubles and team
Current USATT rating: 2,361
Collegiate ranking: No. 3
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