Last year, at age 72, after a gap of almost 40 years, I resumed taking tennis lessons. I figured that if I am going to be the next Roger Federer, what better time to start than right now?

Many older Americans are playing sports — in one Ipsos survey, the number of Americans ages 60 and over who played a sport was 43 percent in 2025. The number of athletes who compete in the National Senior Games — a biennial event in which participants ages 50 and above compete in more than 25 sports — more than quadrupled from 2,500 in 1987 to 11,681 in 2023. The number of Americans, 55 and older, who played tennis at least one time, was 4.3 million in 2024, according to the U.S. Tennis Association.