Top table tennis player passes on

The 61-year-old brother of Maurice and Joy Foster, also both table tennis players, represented Jamaica for several years, starting in 1959 when he was just 14 years old.

By the time Foster retired from the game he had won the Caribbean men’s singles title on three occasions in 1962, 1963 and 1965; the mixed doubles title four times in 1961, 1962, 1964; and 1965, and the men’s doubles title in 1962. That year he excelled with triple wins in the men’s singles, mixed doubles with his sister Joy and the men’s doubles with Leo Davis.

Says Tony Becca in his column “On The Boundary” in the Jamaica Gleaner: “Many Jamaicans today would not believe it, but there was a time in this country when table tennis was considered a major sport — right behind cricket, football and athletics.

“In those days, and especially so in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, young boys used to walk around with racquets in their back pockets looking for a table on which to parade their skill. The table tennis star was almost as well known as the cricket star who, in those days was the star of stars, and Jamaica was the king of the region.”

Players had to be not only well trained but fit, 21 points constituted a set, the best-of-three sets was a game, three players made up a team, and each player played the other.

During the regional tournaments, Jamaica, with players like Foster, playing against Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana in the men’s team event, would be winners by a large score. The Jamaicans were so strong that three of them were selected to represent the West Indies at the 1959 World Championships in Nagoya, Japan.

That was the time of the Foster family of Jamaica — father Gig (coach), mother Olga (motivator and cheerleader) and Maurice, Dave and Joy (the children who played and left an indelible mark on the sport). Becca asks the question: “Who was the best of them?”

For him it was Dave, rated by many as the third greatest Jamaican player behind Orville Haslam and Fuarnado Roberts.

Becca wrote: “He was a magnificent attacking player, vicious against another attacker, and he was deadly against defenders. He used to rip them apart with his savage two-winged attack. I will never forget Dave as a 14-year-old playing his first match for Jamaica in 1959 at Ward Theatre against Winston ‘Reds’ Mulligan — a 14-year-old from Trinidad playing his first match for his country.

“With older players like Roberts, Mitchell and Davis in the Jamaica team, with one like Taffy Crichlow in Trinidad’s team, it was billed as the battle of the teenagers — a duel between an attacker and a chopper. Dave destroyed ‘Reds’ to the extent, as the story went, that the young visitor ended up in tears.”

Becca continued: “I will never forget Dave in 1963 when, with Jamaica down 2-4 to Trinidad and Tobago, he started the recovery that led to victory.

“I will never forget him in that same tournament handing ‘Reds’ another lesson in the men’s singles final, and I will never forget his brilliant comeback when, after losing the first two sets and trailing 2-11 in the third, he brushed aside Neville Phipps of Trinidad and Tobago in winning the 1965 men’s singles title.”

Dave Foster died in Florida on April 4, but says Becca “the memory of his attacking play, of his greatness, of the quality, the skill which made him one of the country’s top three table tennis players, will remain with me for a long, long time — and so too will the memory of his eyes, of his concentration during play, and of his smile when his last shot flashed past his opponent or when, in relaxation, he gave a joke or two.”