The statistical treatment of energy exchange during gas-liquid collisions is extended to collisions with liquid metal surfaces. Strong bonding between metal atoms, as reflected in high values of surface tension, restricts the surface motion to sinusoidal waves with relatively small values of the wave-vector. Such waves propagate far from the point of impact. Our model predicts that a small, fast atom colliding with a liquid metal surface will lose on average 25% of its energy. The model also accounts for very small trapping probabilities for atom-liquid metal collisions, and for low-energy shoulders in the energy distributions of scattered atoms. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.