Timo Boll (, ; born 8 March 1981) is a German professional table tennis player, who currently plays for Borussia Düsseldorf. He is ranked second in the German Table Tennis National League, and fifteen in the ITTF world rankings as of October 2022. Boll ranks among the best German table tennis players of all time, having ranked world No. 1 in 2003, 2011 and in March 2018. Childhood Boll was born in Erbach im Odenwald, Hessen. Boll started playing at age 4, and was coached at the time by his father. In 1987, he became a member of TSV Höchst. At age 8, he was discovered by Helmut Hampel, a Hessian trainer who promoted him. In 1990, he started to train at the training centre Pfungstadt and four years later changed teams to with whom he took part in the Second Division, at which time he attracted the attention of other table tennis associations. recruited him in 1995, a move which required the entire team to relocate 170 km away, to Höchst, to enable daily training with the then 14-year-old Boll. Boll was placed in position five on the team, but lost only one match throughout the whole season. This contributed to the team's transition to the table tennis national league's Tischtennis-Bundesliga (First Division). Career Junior success At age 14, Boll held the title of youngest player in the national league (A title he shared with Frank Klitzsch). He celebrated his first international success during the Table Tennis European Youth Championships in The Hague in 1995, where he won three gold medals. In 1996, he was a runner up in the Junior Boys Singles of that same competition, but then went on to win the singles title in 1997 and 1998, as well the doubles title in 1998. He finished school with a secondary school level I certificate. Early International success (2002–2003) In 2002, Timo Boll became the first German player to win the Europe-Top-12-Tournament beating Vladimir Samsonov in the final. Boll also became the best German player, according to the ITTF Rankings, overtaking Jörg Roßkopf. During the European Table Tennis Championships in Zagreb, Boll won both the singles and the doubles with Zoltan Fejer-Konnerth. The German team featuring Boll was defeated in the final by the Swedish team with a score of 2–3. With his victory in the 2002 Table Tennis World Cup held in Jinan, China (where he