A MOMENT CAPTURED

Tiffany Brown, Las Vegas Sun

Monday, March 12, 2007 | 7:38 a.m.

Air hockey makes everyone an instant athlete.

"You pick up an air hockey mallet and it brings out everybody's everyday athlete," says Michael "Ricochet" Rosen, center right, the secretary-historian of the United States Air Hockey Association. "It releases your sports animal a little bit. You want to give as good as you get. You can start a little trash talking, and you feel like you can do it all."

Air hockey was created in 1972 and continues to be a game for all ages in arcades and rec rooms. But it will get serious at the World Air Hockey Championships, March 30 to April 1 at the Riviera Convention Center.

Last weekend Davis "Iron Dragon" Lee Huynh, left, defeated European champion Goran "Boy Wonder" Mitic, right, at an invitational tournament at the Tennis Channel Open at Darling Tennis Center.

The spotlight at the world championships will be on Huynh, who won the No. 1 world ranking in a challenge match against five-time world champion Danny Hynes last year.

"Everybody is looking to see if (Huynh) can prove he is No. 1 and actually win it in tournament competition," Rosen says.

Huynh, 30, says the sport has become an obsession for him. "When people are watching 'American Idol,' I'm watching tape of other players for an hour or two hours," he says. "I have prepared so much for this tournament and now I can head into these next two weeks knowing that I did everything it took to become the world champion. I'm confident but not too confident."

It should be a unique spectacle of flying pucks at the Riviera.

"Air hockey is the world's fastest table sport. That puck goes a zillion miles an hour," Rosen said before tempering his hyperbole to say the puck reaches 81 mph.

"Air hockey is one of those things everybody can play. Mothers play with their sons, fathers play with their daughters, every teen and every guy or gal loves to play it. It's a dynamite dating game because it's a very revealing game. It's all about the essence of competition."

tiffany.brown@lasvegassun.com