TENNIS, ANYONE?
Liane Faulder explores adopting a new sport at 58
I am here to tell you a tiny, triumphant tale. At the age of 58, with painful arthritis in my feet and an insulting variety of aches and injuries elsewhere, I have taken up the startlingly difficult game of tennis.
It’s going very well. And not because I have turned into an athlete soon to be sweeping my age group at a master’s tournament somewhere, the subject of awe, having trimmed and toned and developed a six-pack even as I approach 60.
No. It’s going well because playing tennis has given me more joy than I could have imagined, and has opened up a new vista. This is something I wasn’t expecting, and in fact, have been avoiding for reasons only now becoming clear to me, now that I have tennis as my guide.
Since beginning group lessons in November, I have developed an interest in watching the sport on television. I am going on a winter holiday that involves tennis. I am looking forward to spring so I can get outside on community league courts. And I have begun to imagine that rather than living out the rest of my days in the same rigid pattern of work, multiple fitness classes, relentless socializing balanced by family commitments and bathroom-scrubbing (heretofore my favourite pastimes), there might be something more. Something different.
But first, the hard facts. Taking up tennis, a sport that requires speed, agility, quick-thinking and strength, has opened my eyes to the possibility of change. At the same time, it has rubbed my nose in the daunting physical limitations of my age.
According to Darren DeLorey, associate professor in the faculty of kinesiology, sport and recreation at the University of Alberta, “all of our physiological systems progressively decline as we age.” Yes, all of them.
“Our circulatory system doesn’t deliver oxygen as well, or remove waste as well. We don’t breathe as well, don’t have quite the same capacity,” says DeLorey. “We tend to lose muscle mass and what goes along with the loss of muscle mass is a gain in fat mass, and as a result, we tend to lose strength and are less fatigue-resistant. And there is evidence you don’t recover as quickly.”
Though I repeatedly queried DeLorey as to any possible physical upside of aging, it appears there is none. Best-case scenario is that if you are blessed genetically and are active “... the decline is variable.”
DeLorey says that with an exercise program that includes aerobics as well as resistance or strength training, you can prevent loss of muscle mass to a certain degree and maintain cardiorespiratory function. I already do those things (see previous reference to frenetic exercise regime). So I thought perhaps I would have an advantage.
But when I first stepped on the court during my group lesson at the Saville Centre in November, I felt sluggish, fat and slow. By the second class, I had pulled a muscle in my calf merely by stepping backward, which sent me home in a fit of pique to ice and down antiinflammatories. Still, something in me resolved to stick it out. I wrapped my gimpy calf in a tensor bandage for the remainder of the lessons, and my instructor kindly took it easy on me.
But I felt scared, stupid and old next to the much-younger women in my class. This might not be as easy as I had hoped.
The press is full of stories about the importance of being fit as you age, and also with tales of magnificent athletes who maintain at least some of their prowess as their hair turns grey.
But there aren’t many stories about people like me. I am not an athlete. When I was little, my mother resorted to locking me out of the house so I would play outside, because all I ever wanted to do was read. I was only saved the humiliation of being picked last for team sports in junior high because my best friend, Judy, was a rocket on any playing field, and I was part of her package.
I took up both downhill skiing and golf in my teens, and both terrified me for different reasons. I skated when my children were little, so we could do something outside as a family, and found it the stupidest sport ever. Falling on ice is inevitable and hurts. I am sure you see the pattern here.
The only thing I managed to do with any degree of physical proficiency throughout my life was run, which I enjoyed for 30 years. It relieved stress, cost me nothing and made me proud. But at 49, arthritis in my feet and other puzzling pains robbed me of this pleasure.
I firmly redirected all physical efforts toward spin classes, yoga and Pilates. Still, body and joint pain persisted, regardless of extensive time and money spent on physiotherapy, chiropractic and massage. I sit on an ice pack at work to ease sciatic torment. I rub analgesics on my joints. Along the way, I have lost confidence in my body’s ability to be my trusted partner. And I knew it was all going to get worse. That made me sad.
Part of the reason I began tennis was to try and reverse that depressing situation. Tennis was the one sport I liked to watch on television. Judy and I had played a bit in our teens, and I had also played some squash and racquetball in my 20s, though I gave it up entirely when the children were born. Thirty years later, I met a man who played tennis. I felt a faint stirring of motivation in my belly. Maybe, just maybe, this could work.
I am not the only person to discover tennis in later life. While trolling the internet for inspiration and tennis tips, I ran into a 2016 essay in the New York Times, written by Gerald Marzorati, author of Late to the Ball: A Journey into Tennis and Aging. The essay actually made me weep, and I greedily devoured the book.
Marzorati, also a bookish child and not an athlete, took up competitive tennis at 55 when his children were poised to leave home and retirement was creeping up. He threw himself into it with gusto, spending vast hours and sums of money on coaches and clinics. Marzorati travelled around the United States, taking part in competitions for older folks, and began trailing pro tournaments as a fan.
In short, he became obsessed, and not just because he enjoyed the game itself. Taking up tennis late in life taught Marzorati to live life differently. Ten years later, he doesn’t claim the sport has reversed his aging process. But immersion in something new and difficult changed him.
“You seize time and you make it yours,” he wrote in the New York Times. “You counter the narrative of diminishment and loss with one of progress and bettering. You spend hours removed from the past (there is so much of it now) and in a sense, the present (and all its attendant responsibilities and aches), and immerse yourself in the as-yet.”
In a phone interview from his home in Westchester, N.Y., Marzorati elaborates. He feels physically better since taking up tennis, but knows tennis has not altered his biological reality.
“You can exercise and eat well, but you are still diminishing on a molecular level, an organic system level,” he says. “By being a beginner at something, learning and developing a passion for something, you get to have this narrative that’s your own, off to the side of this larger, looming, slowing down that happens to all of us.
“You get to have this other storyline of improvement, and increased capacity. Psychologically, at least for me, this has been fantastic. It doesn’t have to be tennis. But it’s good for anyone to find such a thing in our lives.”
Marzorati says taking up tennis shifted his perspective. As a former editor for the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s and The New Yorker, he was always a multi-tasker who found it hard to concentrate on one thing. Tennis has improved his focus, helped him to live in the moment.
“When I step on the tennis court, I am here and now. I love that feeling. Other people can find that one thing that’s their own. I think that’s important.”
Another unexpected benefit, says Marzorati, is the relationships he has built.
“But one of the byproducts of playing, and Billie Jean King has said this a million times, is that tennis is all about the relationships. I feel this so strongly. It’s an opportunity to meet people and to strive together and play hard together. Here we are, all in our 60s, running and sweating and grunting. We’re trying to really live. Society sends signals that you’re not living so much anymore when you’re 65. But that’s not what happens when you’re out there.”
I have not been playing for 10 years, merely five months. But I am experiencing what Marzorati describes. Even playing only once a week, I am seeing improvement. This is a reminder of what our parents taught us as children: if you practise, you will get better. It’s been so long since I practised anything, I had completely forgotten that fact.
Much of my adult life has been lived in a headlong dash to cram in a lot of stuff. It’s who I am and it’s what my job is all about. I was also a single parent at a young age, and not so much focused as frantic. Being in the moment was a laughable concept. Who had time for that luxury?
Playing tennis, I find my mind slowing, even as I struggle to take it all in. Moving as quickly as possible to get in position, I must decide so many things at once: whether to take that ball early, or take it late, when to adjust my grip, step into the shot and how to follow-through. What I’m not thinking about is work, or calling that girlfriend I haven’t connected with for ages, or washing my car, or my parents. None of those things is bad, but collectively, they rattle the brain.
When I play tennis, I must concentrate hard simply to move my body. Bit by bit, it reacts more quickly. I fell down recently while backing up for a shot, landed hard on my back, my feet kicking upwards like a beetle. But I didn’t hurt myself. I jumped back up and felt good just to be able to do that. I get sweaty and my hair is a mess. I care not a whit how I look, or who is watching. I am having fun.
I have also discovered something that many people have known for a very long time. Sport isn’t just about the physical achievement. It is often a spiritual exercise, and there are lessons that go beyond the body. Such is the perspective of tennis pro Ivan Quintero, for six years a coach at the Saville Community Sports Centre and coach of the women’s tennis team at the University of Alberta. He has worked with tennis players as young as five, and as old as 93. Quintero insists tennis is a sport for a lifetime, no matter when you start.
“It’s not so much about your age as your level. You can be 55 and play with a 30-year-old who is about the same level as you,” says Quintero. “This weekend, I saw a 62-year-old beat a 40-year-old in a tournament.”
Quintero says tennis is a direct route to well-being, increasing both self-esteem and optimism, and decreasing depression, anger and anxiety.
“Tennis makes you think. It can be challenging with the technique in the beginning. But after you master that, then you start having fun and thinking about the game, tactics, how to win points and beat your opponents.”
He says tennis players need to play two or three times a week to get significantly better, and private lessons will help, too.
Quintero has words of encouragement for people like me, taking up the sport as an older adult.
“The older players are definitely more patient. It’s just like life, there is a little more wisdom with the older players and they think more. But not everybody. Tennis really shows your personality. Are you someone who gives up quickly? Are you willing to put in the time to learn? When you go into competition, do you get angry? Can you focus on the next point?”
But here’s the kicker — which I find more heartening than you can possibly imagine.
“With tennis, you can live your life over and over,” says Quintero. “You come to the end, and you can relive it again and again, trying to make it better every time, making some different decisions, or maybe some of the same decisions.
“Imagine how many lives you can live, how many chances you have to make it better and to learn from your mistakes? Every point you play in tennis is a new life.”
Even at this early stage, tennis has illuminated a new path for me. While I won’t likely win tournaments or even accolades, I don’t care if I ever succeed in objective terms.
I like the way I am when I play tennis. It has helped me break out of some of my own stifling patterns. Tennis has taken me to a place of joy and of exuberance, and if I play again tomorrow, or next week, I can find that place again. It has made me believe that life is not winding down, but starting anew.
And that is enough — it is more than enough — for me.