Meet Colin Cummings: US air force officer and greatest air hockey player of all time

The Guardian

a day ago

About an hour before our scheduled chat, Colin Cummings accompanies his polite request to delay with a photograph of an image familiar to parents worldwide, a grizzling newborn strapped to his front, resolutely refusing to succumb to her morning nap.
Cummings has gone about this week's defence of his air hockey world title rather differently to his many others. Partly, that is thanks to baby Clara's arrival a couple of months ago, which has dominated most of the summer. The rest of it has been dictated by a job relocation to Hawaii where he has been given a three-year posting as a personnel officer in the US air force. The air hockey table at his Oahu home represents the only professional-style playing surface in the whole multi-island state.
Shorn of suitable playing partners, Cummings has geared up for his tilt at a sixth successive world crown in an unconventional manner. Irregular solo practises – increasingly infrequent since Clara's birth – have been the air hockey equivalent of a tennis player hitting balls against a wall. He has also attempted to keep track of opponents on the mainland through video streams of their matches, but his main physical activity of late involves surfing Hawaii's famous waves.
Aged just 26, Cummings is already almost universally considered the air hockey GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Two other players, Danny Hynes and Jesse Douty, are now tied with his 12 world titles, but that pair are generally bracketed alongside a couple of others on the second rung of air hockey's all-time pyramid. Cummings, alone, stands at the top.
It was he who, at 16, became the youngest ever world champion in the sport – and Cummings is absolutely adamant that air hockey is a sport. And it is he who has relinquished just one of the 13 world championships held over the past decade. Ask the man himself and he is in no doubt over his GOAT status: 'Oh hell yeah, bro, I got to be. I've even got a little goat sticker on my mallet.'
Most people Cummings encounters are surprised to hear that air hockey even possesses a competitive life outside arcades and home basements. Played on a low-friction table, with opposing players attempting to hit the puck into goals using handheld mallets, the elite side of the sport has, in fact, been around for almost 50 years, beginning soon after air hockey's invention.
Texas, North Carolina, Illinois and Idaho are America's four major competitive hubs, while the recent boom in barcades – drinking establishments featuring retro entertainment offerings – has provided a resurgence in pockets across the country. Aside from a Venezuelan contingent, and a smattering of Russians and Spaniards, air hockey tends to be an all-American affair.
Cummings' route in began when his family relocated to Texas in 2009 and happened to move across the road from the world No 4 player. Invited over for a game by the man's son – who was the top-ranked Under-12 player – Cummings received a pasting and vowed not to let it happen again: 'I instantly knew I had to beat the kid. He was so cocky.'
Within six months, the Cummings family found a small table of their own at a garage sale; half a year later, they had upgraded it to a professional-standard table. While Colin emerged as the star, air hockey quickly became something for the whole family to play. His younger brother Connor is now ranked world No 3, while their father, Mike, is No 15. As he has done for close to a decade, Colin tops the pile.
In the smallest of niche sporting ponds, the biochemistry graduate is a superstar. But unlike his world-beating peers – think Roger Federer, Lionel Messi or Oleksandr Usyk – he receives next to no external recognition.
'It's definitely a challenge,' he says, of his vastly contrasting lives on and off the air hockey table. 'I have to be versatile.
'I have my air force persona where I have to embody a leadership character. Then there's the air hockey champion persona where I walk into a room and people all want to meet me when I have no idea who they are. Then there's normal life.
'I remember when I won my first world title in 2015, I went back to my day job where I was a salad boy/janitor, just mopping the floor in a hair net. I'd gone from being world champion to mopping floors.'
In the fledgling days of his relationship with his now-wife Meg, Cummings sent her a video link of an interview he did with CNN. 'She was like: 'You're the world champion? What the heck?' But she's very supportive.'
So much so that husband and wife even joined forces to claim world doubles silver in 2022, although Cummings suggests that was a one-off: 'If I've not been playing at all in Hawaii, then she's definitely not been playing.'
The furthest any possible discontent stretches is Meg forlornly enquiring whether they might vacation farther afield than Texas, where the world championships usually take place. That return to familiar soil does at least mean they can forego expensive hotel bills and stay with family for free during competition.
In a sport that offers about $2,000 prize money for winning the world title, Cummings suggests he has 'at least broken even, if not made money' over the course of his career. When not based in Hawaii, he had also previously earned modest sums through sponsorship from small companies.
The ultimate ambition is to 'break out of this niche bubble and turn into something that's multinational and well cemented'. The closest comparison, he says, would be to emulate the growth of table football or foosball – which has produced men and women's world champions from 10 different countries over the past two decades – and, eventually, table tennis.
Until then, Cummings must content himself with the adulation of a select few and the ignorance of the masses. When he returns from this week's world championships, he intends to hold an exhibition tournament at home in Hawaii for his air force colleagues, who all believe they can beat him. 'So I'll toast them all,' he says. Wayne Gretzky never had to deal with such disrespect.