Get ready to spice up your life — Pepper Pong could be the perfect social game for space-starved New Yorkers in need of a mental boost.
The all-comers welcome, no table-required version of ping pong can be played just about anywhere — on a car hood, or even in a cramped apartment — and some fans are even referring to the pastime, created to stave off loneliness and depression, as “the next pickleball.”
“It’s so much more fun than real ping pong, and it’s so much more useful because you can play on any surface,” creator Tom Filippini told The Post.
All you need for this back-and-forth affair is a portable, plastic net that can adapt to any flat surface and three types of weighted, Nerf foam-style balls — each designed to bounce with different velocities.
The 50-year-old said he and his family have played unofficial versions of the game for over a decade.
“You don’t need that huge table, or the second mortgage that is required these days to make space for it,” the Denver dad said.
Colored green, yellow and red — and named after peppers ascending in heat, red being the spiciest, or, rather, the most difficult, they can be swapped in and out during play.
Due to their heft, each of the balls will bounce in a more controlled manner than table tennis players will be used to — players need not worry about wind or chasing after serves gone awry.
An avid ping-pong player, Filippini came up with the idea while in treatment and battling an addiction to alcohol.
Finding himself in an extremely lonely state, he was looking for ways to connect with others.
The spark came after seeing the rehab facility’s beat-up and worn-out table that could no longer be played on.
“I was becoming optimistic about life and what I could do,” he explained. “As I got clean and sober, I sort of said, hey, why wouldn’t I just invent this game?”
During the pandemic, Filippini began marketing a $70 gameplay set, complete with four paddles. He’s sold over 10,000 so far.
As the game brought light into his life, the same has apparently happened for others.
“We do specifically receive emails directly related to how my story resonated with customers,” he said.
Pepper Pong has also incredibly caught on in the realm of professional sports. PGA golfers like Chris Kirk, who has also struggled with addiction and left golf for treatment in 2019, is a fan.
“I had so many bad memories of sitting in hotel rooms [alone] and not really wanting to be there,” Kirk told The Post ahead of playing in the US Open.
“I see it a lot with many other guys and people that I am friends with. You see them at the golf course and then you know they’re just going back to the hotel by themselves, living that sort of lonely lifestyle,” he said.
Upon Kirk’s return to the sport around seven months later, he realized how harmful isolation was to his mental and emotional well-being.
So, Kirk came up with the idea of renting houses with many of his good friends on tour. With that, came the introduction of Pepper Pong, which Kirk’s wife gifted him, to blow off steam.
“It’s a great distraction to get your mind off the pressure we feel playing out here.”
Kirk remembered a few times that the game made being on tour feel more like the ultimate boys trip — such as during the Genesis Invitational at Rivera Country Club in Los Angeles last February.
Accompanied by Sepp Straka, J.T. Poston and Danny McCarthy, the foursome was confined to “a teeny little dining room, just trying not to crash into the walls,” but made the cramped space work to play doubles against one another.
It was “just a blast,” he recalled.
Another time while at Pebble Beach in Monterey, California, Kirk, Straka and Brian Harman were cooped up inside when a severe storm rolled through and killed their power. It did little to stop their bonding thanks to Pepper Pong.
“We were stuck in the house and there were trees down all over the place. So the three of us pretty much took turns, playing on and off all day,” he said.
“To be able to have that, where you’ve got a close group of friends, you’re able to have at least part of your day where you can get your mind off of some of the stress and, get away from some of the loneliness that comes that can come with this profession, it’s really awesome.”
While the game might have been borne out of hardship, the main thing to know is that it’s really fun, Filippini said. He’s seen, time and again, how it gets families — from young to old — off their phones and moving around.
Best of all, everyone can physically keep up — something that gets harder and harder with age.
“Pepper Pong is sort of a mechanism through which people can connect. They’re on their feet, maybe sitting on the floor, and they’re talking, playing, laughing, competing and having fun.”
“I call it isolation Kryptonite.”
CJ Meunier of Verona, New Jersey, is one of the recent converts to the sport.
“We bought it and fell in love with the game,” the engaged teacher, who regularly plays with his fiancee, told The Post.
The happy couple, who recently moved in together, said they had had to forfeit some of their hobbies due to the small, shared space they now call home.
In the past few months, Pepper Pong has been a lifesaver, they said.
“I got into pickleball a lot over the last two summers and obviously when the weather gets cold, you’re not going out to play pickleball,” Meunier, 34, said.
“But this is the one game where you can move around a little bit — and we’re competitive.”
As warmer weather sets in, Meunier said he’s bringing his Pepper Pong set to the NYC suburb’s highly crowded pickleball courts — the perfect spot to start up a side game and meet some new people, while waiting for a turn.
“I could even see this being the next pickleball,” he said.
Meunier bringing the game set to his local pickleball court is the type of anecdote Filippini loves to hear — he said that Pepper Pong has a unique power to bring people closer together. Sometimes, even when they already know each other.
“There are not many things I can do with my almost 80-year-old mother, but we can play Pepper Pong together,” he said. “Anyone can play — [it’s like] a deck of cards.”
Frank Pinto of Franklin Square, Long Island, said he’s used Pepper Pong to bond with his 23-year-old son Shane Pinto, a hot shot center for the Ottawa Senators who spends much of the year far from home.
“We’ve created some good laughs along the way. I just can’t beat him anymore,” Pinto, 55, told The Post. “Finding things to connect on as they get older is important and it’s good to capture those moments. It keeps us connected.”