A Mountaineer Gets To The Top Of The Mountain

Family, a career, two tragedies, four heart attacks, performance anxiety, and stiff competition kept Bill Farrar from a national title in table tennis...until July 6. He won the 85+ division singles and he was all smiles.

By Ray Glier

MARIETTA, Ga.___During his working career, Bill Farrar, 85, was accustomed to being on his feet for long periods of time. His job required a certain amount of hand-eye coordination and dexterity with an instrument.

You bet being an orthodontist helped him win a national championship in table tennis.

Farrar, who lives here northwest of Atlanta, took a 3½-hour ride to Huntsville, Ala., July 3-7 and won a gold medal in the 85+ Singles in the 2024 US National Table Tennis Championships.

He was the cat who got the cream, the dog with two tails, because Bill won three more medals on the trip of a lifetime.

Farrar and Jim Chase won the gold in the 80&Over Men’s Doubles and Bill and Alice Tym took bronze in the 65&over Mixed Doubles, playing “kids” 20 years younger.

Farrar also took a shot at playing with the youngsters in 80+ singles and won silver.

Bill has been playing table tennis for 68 years and it was his first national title. Did all the competition leave the sport and just now make room for his glory?

Not quite. There were just more important things going on in his life.

Farrar, who has been the best senior player in Georgia for 45 years, helped raise six kids and with the USA national championships over the July 4 holiday every year, Bill chose his children and the beach over his passion for the game.

What’s more, he cared for his wife for five years as she was dying from pancreatic cancer. Farrar also had 11 heart procedures and has 16 stents, the fallout from four heart attacks. 

Then there was the thriving dental practice Farrar kept up with until he was 82, which kept him from the full-on chase of a gold medal. He start poking around people’s mouths in 1964, after seven years at West Virginia University (four undergrad, three dental school) where he was 7-time university table tennis champion.

Farrar didn’t start playing in national tournaments until he was in his late 70s.

Now that he has some time, Bill can play. Believe me, he can play.

This Geezer Jock journalist saw Farrar’s setup in his basement. A professional table, a $200 paddle, and a robot he practices with every day. The robot, nicknamed “Jerry West” for the WVU and NBA basketball superstar because of its accuracy, sprays the ball all over the table at hiccup-quick speeds and Bill works hard to return the shots.

He doesn’t just return them. He adds some mustard.

Farrar is an offensive-minded player. He plays on his front foot, never his back foot. If your return is too high off the table, Bill will smash it past you.

His skill is undeniable, but Bill would sabotage his shot-making with something few athletes are willing to say out loud. There were some matches where he got the “yips”.

“It was performance anxiety,” Farrar said.

You have to admire the honesty and the determination to play through the pressure, which is what he did July 6 in the 85+ final against Chase. Bill won the first game of the best of 5, then Chase took the next two games with his confounding returns that come back as knuckleballs.

Facing defeat, Bill dug in down 2 games to 1.

Here is the teachable moment you find in every Geezer Jock story.

“He had all the momentum,” Farrar said. “I was really under pressure in that fourth game. I had to play every point hard.

“I was cornered. I had to come out and get a lead.”

There is a quote out there, I’m not sure by who, but it goes something like this, “Gaining momentum in the direction you want to go is entirely in your hands.”

Momentum was in Bill’s hands with that paddle. He jumped ahead 3-0 and never surrendered mighty mo and won the fourth game, 11-8. Then he won the decisive fifth game, 11-5.

“Unless you prepare to win, you prepare to lose,” Farrar said.

Bill started preparing to win when he was 17 years old at the local teen center in Beckley. He played every day for 18 months then went off to Morgantown and WVU and won seven straight university championships.

Jerry West himself would come to the student union and watch the table tennis tournament.

That was a thrill, but for Bill Farrar it didn't match the thrill of making it to the top of his sport.

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That's "Jerry West" the table tennis robot and Bill Farrar's practice partner. It can shoot from all angles with accuracy, like West, the WVU  and NBA superstar, who passed recently.

Bill with his four medals at the U.S. table tennis championships.