Ma Long: the career of table tennis's greatest player

Whenever people argue about the greatest table tennis player of all time, Ma Long shows up on nearly every list, and often at the top. The Chinese star won just about everything the sport has to offer, several times over, and kept that level for more than a decade.

This page covers Ma Long's career, his biggest titles, his playing style and how he left the international tour. To compare him with other legends, see the greatest table tennis players of all time.

Who is Ma Long

Ma Long was born on October 20, 1988, in Anshan, in Liaoning province in northeast China. He is right-handed and plays with the shakehand grip. He joined the Chinese national team early and, in 2006, still a teenager, was already part of the world champion team.

Over the years he picked up several nicknames. The best known are "The Dragon", from his own name (Long means dragon in Chinese), and "The Captain", for leading the men's team for years. Fans also call him the "Hexagon Warrior", after a six-sided chart that rates a player on things like serve, technique, power and speed, on which he supposedly maxes out every category.

Ma Long's titles

Ma Long was world No. 1 for a long time. He first reached the top in 2010 and, across all his spells, spent more than five years there, including a run of 34 straight months from March 2015.

The double Grand Slam

In table tennis, a player completes the Grand Slam by winning Olympic singles gold, the World Championships singles and the World Cup singles. Ma Long completed his at Rio 2016. At Tokyo 2020, with his second Olympic singles gold, he became the first man to win each of those three events at least twice, the so-called double Grand Slam. He is also the only man with two Olympic singles golds.

His three straight world titles (Suzhou 2015, Düsseldorf 2017 and Budapest 2019) show another side of his career: consistency. In 2019 he was coming back from months out with a knee injury and still won the Worlds.

Playing style

Ma Long's game is a model for a lot of coaches. The strengths people mention most:

• A huge forehand, with heavy, accurate loops that can end the point from anywhere.
• Elite serve and return, with lots of spin variation and short placement. That gave him control of the point on the third ball, as explained in serve and third ball attack.
• A solid backhand that can block, open up and counterattack.
• Very few unforced errors and calm in big points.

It is not a trick-shot style. It is the fundamentals, executed almost without mistakes.

Leaving the international tour

After Paris 2024, where he won his sixth Olympic gold in the team event, Ma Long said those Games would be the last stop of his professional career. In December 2024, he, Fan Zhendong and Chen Meng were removed from the ITTF world rankings, and the Chinese federation said their withdrawal procedures were complete.

In November 2025, Ma Long said goodbye at China's National Games in Guangzhou. Playing for Beijing alongside Wang Chuqin, he won the team final against Fan Zhendong's Shanghai and took the one National Games title missing from his resume. Chinese media described the win as the close of his career.

Why Ma Long matters

Ma Long won across three different Olympic cycles and stayed on top through big changes in the sport, such as the switch from celluloid to plastic balls. For many young players he is the technical reference. And the Chinese team he led helps explain why China dominates table tennis.

Frequently asked questions