Former pro Dan Lobb’s perky documentary follows the irrepressible athletes as they compete for glory in their age groups’ world championships
Three sinewy octogenarians and one unfeasibly hale-looking nonagenarian are the focus of this perky documentary looking at tennis players still holding their own in a late tiebreak with father time. A mixture of ex-pros and dogged late starters who picked the game up in middle age, they all converge at the International Tennis Federation senior world championships in Croatia; a tournament with more matches than Wimbledon. As serial winner King van Nostrand – a former maths teacher who was 85 at the time of filming – points out, small margins of age count; at a given point, a younger player of inferior ability will statistically start beating their older betters.
A stooping Floridian with a rapier grin, Van Nostrand has dominated the seniors circuit winning a record-breaking 43 titles and is still not tired of winning. His doubles partner is 87-year-old John Powless, a varsity-league and pro player whose beautiful stroke and attaboy magnanimity are intact, but whose energy is being sapped by chemo. Refusing to acknowledge her age (82), Etty Marouani is a coquettish former Parisian model who took up tennis at 42. Her girlish hair ribbon belies a killer determination to add the world title to her French seniors one. Most remarkable is 95-year-old Ukrainian Leonid Stanislavskyi, an amateur who picked up a racket to keep body and mind ticking over. He’s generally resigned to being battered by his juniors, with only two other nonagenarian competitors available. “Even if I lose, I’ll come third,” he says.