I was always a decent athlete, who loved to compete. As a kid, each Summer my folks would send me to a sports camp, which exposed me to a wide array of team and individual sports. And I was fortunate to get instruction from college level coaches. This instruction, together with the extra work I would put in with my dad, let me develop skills I would need to compete. Thus, by osmosis, and while still quite young, I had adopted a coach’s mindset for competition, for sizing up an opponent’s vulnerabilities and formulating winning game strategies.
Nonetheless, as I got older and my personal universe expanded, I also had to acknowledge my limitations as an athlete. I regularly encountered people bigger, faster, or stronger than I was, including a few truly elite athletes who simply operated at a higher skill level that I could not match.
Humbling, naturally, but even so, my deeply ingrained love of competitive sports remained intact. Of course, as an adult, my participation in sports continued to evolve over time. By the time I was in my early forties, age-related ailments –the pulled hamstrings, twisted ankles, tennis elbow and other nagging wear-and-tear injuries—had all but forced me to abandon the organized team sports of my childhood, including football, basketball, and baseball.
However, I remained an avid and competitive racquetball player. Indeed, I still play, but my physical abilities now have diminished to the point where I no longer play competitive singles and 3-way cut-throat. I am reduced to playing occasional doubles with a few other “old guys” for fun.
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For many men in my age group, golf is a preferred sport, but I never much liked it. Golf is expensive and devilishly hard to master past a certain age. It is true that for many years I played in a weekly foursome with my dad, mainly to spend some quality time with him. When dad finally was too old to play, thankfully I also was free to stop playing, which I did almost immediately.
Some friends with whom I formerly had played competitive team sports from time to time still reach out to coax me back to golf, but these days to a man they depend on golf carts to move around a course. For me, riding in a golf cart was never a proper form of exercise. It still isn’t. This said, I will occasionally join up with these friends for post-golf drinks, or dinner, or to support a worthy charitable cause.
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While in Tucson this past Winter I decided to learn how to play pickleball, reported to be the fastest growing recreational sport in the United States. The game combines elements of tennis, badminton, and ping pong, but is far slower and physically less taxing than tennis. Anyone can play the game, which perhaps explains pickleball’s phenomenal rapid growth and current popularity.
The stereotypical pickleball player is a sun-tanned retiree. While I met many sun-tanned, retired senior citizens during my weekly forays to the Tucson pickleball courts, surprisingly, senior citizens comprise only about one-third of the active pickleball playing public. Despite this low percentage, it is estimated that people ages fifty and up sustain 90% of pickleball-related injuries! See https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pickleball-americas-fastest-growing-sport-212914557.html As I’ve since come to learn, the single biggest group of players by age consists of young folks, ages 18-34.
Age aside, most of the seniors I played in Tucson were highly competitive and tournament tough. All manner of pickleball leagues proliferate there. I met people who claimed to play as much as five to seven hours a day, often traveling considerable distances from one match or league to the next. As a beginner, I suffered regular and severe beatings at the hands of seniors whose spotted skin was as rough as a cactus, and whose attitude about winning made them as mean and dangerous as any rattlesnake.
Back home, I manage to scrounge up games two or three times each week. Now, if I am not the oldest participant, I certainly am among the very oldest. I estimate that the average age of my competition is roughly forty rather than seventy. While my game has improved, I still don’t seem to pose stern competition for most of them. And it doesn’t help that, despite steady improvement, I’m still racing the clock. I can’t stop myself from getting older.
Fortunately, I still have several months before Lola and I return to Arizona. Then, I plan to mete out some street justice and a little payback!
