Spencer Lam, of Schaumburg, is competing later this month at the U.S. Table Tennis Open in Milwaukee. (Provided by Spenser Lam)

The smell of sweat and the sounds of shoes squeaking against the floor filled the park district gymnasium, but for Spencer Lam of Schaumburg, it’s just another intense game of table tennis.

Lam, 50, who is in the Schaumburg Park District’s table tennis club, is a seasoned player, headed later this month to compete in the U.S. Table Tennis Open in Milwaukee. This week he practiced with his club to help prepare. Lam said he practices three times a a week.

“I’ve been playing since I was about 9 years old,” said Lam, an engineering technician who grew up in Vietnam and moved to the U.S. in 1980. He’s been living in Schaumburg for about 13 years.

After seeing the Chinese table tennis team play an exhibition game at his school, Lam said he was hooked and has played ever since. As a teenager, Lam was a city champion for three consecutive years in his hometown, he said.

Although table tennis – or ping pong, as it’s often called – isn’t a popular sport in the U.S., in Asia and Europe it’s followed as much as Americans watch baseball or football, Lam said.

A lot of people don’t know how physical table tennis is, he said. Americans “think it’s just hitting a ball in their basement.”

But, the game as Lam plays it is very physically demanding with the speed of the ball reaching upwards of 80 mph, he said.

Players run around the court, covering wide areas to hit the ball, much like tennis, he said. Lam even incorporates running and other cardiovascular exercises into his workout to stay in shape for competition.

Lam competes in three or four tournaments a year, and also organizes the Schaumburg club’s tournaments. The U.S. Open, however, is a larger-scale tournament that will host more than 700 players from 25 different countries beginning June 30 through July 5, said Linda Leaf, the tournament’s local organizing committee chair.

“Major international players come to compete,” she said, adding this year’s tournament is unique because it also celebrates the 40th anniversary of “Ping Pong Diplomacy,” when the U.S. table tennis team played an exhibition game in China. That game helped ease relations between the two countries, and between China and the rest of the world, Leaf said.

“Here in the U.S. it’s just a footnote in our history, but to the Chinese it’s very, very important,” she said.

For Lam, the tournament is another chance to compete at a high-level and against top players.

It’s also a chance to bring more attention to the game Lam loves.

When Lam first came to this country there weren’t a lot of young people playing table tennis, he said, but “I’m happy to see a lot more junior programs now.”

Lam said he’d love to run his own junior table tennis program one day.

“It’s a very, very good sport,” he said. “A lot of people just don’t know it.”