Glenn Cowan

Glenn L. Cowan (August 25, 1952 – April 6, 2004) was an American table tennis player.

Biography Cowan was from New Rochelle, New York, and was Jewish. His parents were Phil (a television executive, who died at age 48) and Fran Cowan. The family later moved to Bel Air, California. He won the 1967 U.S. Open junior under-17s table tennis championships.

Cowan was arguably one of two critical personalities, the other being the Chinese table tennis player Zhuang Zedong, in the 1971 ping-pong diplomacy which helped paved the way for President Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972. He was the youngest player on the first U.S. table tennis team to compete in 1971's “Ping-pong diplomacy” tour to China.

Cowan studied at UCLA and Santa Monica College (1969 to 1972). He became a junior high school teacher. He was posthumously inducted into the California Table Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014.