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

Unlike his team mates, who ignored Cowan, Zhuang Zedong greeted him and presented him with a silk-screen portrait of the Huangshan Mountains, thus starting the so-called ping-pong diplomacy.

[5][6] 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.

[7][8] He was the youngest player on the first U.S. table tennis team to compete in 1971's “Ping-pong diplomacy” tour to China.

This biographical article relating to an American table tennis figure is a stub.