Longevity study gives trophy to tennis

Horse racing is the sport of kings. Baseball, the American pastime. Boxing, the sweet science. Soccer, the beautiful game.

Tennis, we now learn, is the sport of long life.

I started playing tennis when I was old enough to lift a racket at the Hotel del Coronado’s majestic (and much missed) beachside courts.

My older sister was a good junior in the early ’50s, a tough out for contemporary Karen Hantze, who would go on to win Wimbledon.

I followed suit, playing with San Diego kids like Roy Barth, John Sanderlin, Carlos Carriedo in the 10-and-unders.

Sixty years later, here I am, running after dropshots in the 70-and-over division.

At the Pacific Southwest Senior Tennis Championships, played last week in Newport Beach, two tennis-related headlines stirred debate among players before and after matches.

First, of course, was the Serena issue. Who was more at fault, the umpire or the player, for the mortifying ending of the women’s U.S. Open final?

The consensus was that Serena had failed a tennis character test while the umpire, to a lesser degree, deserved criticism for failing to communicate clearly.

As provocative as that subject was, a recent longevity study, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings and reported in the New York Times, hit a more personal nerve for the competitors in the 92-year-old SoCal tournament.

Drawing upon an in-depth study of 8,600 Danish men and women, the study’s authors concluded that, of all recreational activities, tennis is the sport most clearly associated with a ripe old age.

Individual sports like bicycling and running add a little more than three years to an average sedentary life, the study concludes.

The average expiration date for tennis players, however, is more than six years longer than runners and bicyclists.

We all live on borrowed time, but tennis players appear to enjoy a decade-long line of extra credit, according to the data.

The researchers theorize that the social aspect of tennis, the intense interaction with partners and opponents, leads to longer lives.

To the sun-weathered players in Newport, this validation of tennis as a sport rang true.

“I call tennis the holy grail of sport,” offered Felix Ponte, the No. 2 seed in the 70s. He echoed many others when he said that no other sport places the same individual mental and physical demands on players that tennis does, combining the intensely personal combat of, say, boxing and the emotionally freighted calculations of chess.

It is, in short, the perfect game for a long life, a sport born in medieval monasteries and reinvented for British lawns in the mid-19th century.

I called Dr. Leland Housman, a San Diego cardiologist and top-ranked senior player now in the 75s. Though skeptical that tennis by itself played a decisive role in extending life, Housman allowed that senior players may be a fortunate genetically selected group that tends to live longer.

In that vein, I once interviewed the late Bob Sherman, a California player who, like San Diego legend Dodo Cheney, was winning gold balls well into his 90s.

A mere kid in my late 50s, I asked Sherm for the secret to a long tennis life.

He thought for a long time, so long I wondered if he’d lost the thread. Finally, he delivered the goods.

First, he said, “you have to have good genes.” (OK, that jibes with Dr. Housman’s view.)

Second, “you have to be skinny,” said the skeletal Sherman. (I mentally pinched the fat around my waist.)

And third, “you have to play every day.”

I told that story to Housman and he responded that he’s one of those rare individuals who plays every day on his own clay court, a surface that’s forgiving to the joints.

At the Pacific Southwest, two players in their 90s competed for the title. Four competed in the doubles.

They’re the survivors whose ships haven’t sunk.

Tournament director Ken Stuart told me about a player who called him to inquire if there was a 100-and-over division.

Stuart said if the centenarian could find an opponent anywhere in the country, he’d fly him to Orange County and put him up in a hotel.

“How do you plan to get here?” Stuart asked.

“How do you think I’d get there?” the ancient player shot back. “I’d drive!”

Years ago, at a 90s national tournament, I asked a group of the players why they seemed to prefer singles, which requires more running than doubles.

“I had a doubles partner,” one of the gentlemen said, “but he died.”

Then he looked into the distance and sighed mournfully.

“You can always find a new wife,” he said, “but a doubles partner ...”

His voice trailed off.

The weathered players at the table nodded as if to say, “So true, so true.”

Earlier today, I lost in the 70s final to a left-hander who was fitter than I was that hot day.

As I was walking from the court, utterly exhausted, beaten, a friend tried to cheer me up.

“Worse things have happened to men at sea,” he smiled.