TTV Gönnern [de] 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.
He celebrated his first international success during the Table Tennis European Youth Championships in The Hague in 1995, where he won three gold medals.
During the European Table Tennis Championships in Zagreb, Boll won both the singles and the doubles with Zoltan Fejer-Konnerth.
After a period marked by public criticism, Timo Boll won tournament victories in Poland, Austria, and Germany.
Early in the 2005 season, Boll's back problems struck again; nevertheless, he won the silver medal in doubles at the World Championship, playing with Christian Süß.
The year ended with Boll winning the Champions League with TTV RE-BAU Gönnern [de], and the Table Tennis World Cup in Liège in Belgium, in which he defeated all three Chinese first-class players.
Boll also moved in light of the upcoming Olympic Games 2008 and the possibility to train there with his doubles partner, Christian Süß.
His 3-year contract with Borussia Düsseldorf began on 1 July 2007, with stipulations allowing him to miss certain Bundesliga matches in order to focus on international tournaments.
At the 2008 World Cup in Liège, he scored a semi-final victory over Ma Long but lost out in the final against Wang Hao, winning a silver medal.
At the beginning of 2011, Timo Boll was back at the top of the world rankings, having beaten Ma Lin in the Volkswagen Cup final.
Boll also won the silver medal at the 2017 World Cup, defeating Lin Gaoyuan in the quarterfinals, Ma Long in the semi-finals but losing to teammate Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the finals.
[13] Boll then defeated Mattias Falck in the semi-finals and Dimitij Ovtcharov in the finals to clinch his record-extending eighth European Championship.
[14] After the event, Boll remarked that he was pleasantly surprised by the championship and that he was glad to be back on top after having a particularly bad last year.
[16] Boll helped lead Germany to the men's team finals, and played a critical role as the third match against Taiwan and Japan.
[18][19] In 2021, Boll won the bronze medal at the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships in Houston, defeating Kanak Jha in the quarterfinals 4-2 before losing to Truls Möregårdh in the semifinals.
He won the WTT Contender in Doha in January, beating top-12 players Jang Woojin, Lin Yun-Ju, and Tomokazu Harimoto back-to-back.
[27][28] Timo Boll is a left-handed player whose best weapon is his forehand topspin drive but who is also noted for his extremely quick backhand loop.
In recent years, due to the introduction of the plastic ball, which cannot be given as much spin, Boll relies more on his counter-topspin technique from both the backhand and forehand side.
A good example of him employing this technique is his match against Fan Zhendong at the Austrian Open in 2019, in which he reached the deciding set against the 16 years younger World No.