Decades into my long career in sports journalism, as I reached late middle age, the game I found most alluring was tennis. It was the only one I could still play respectably—depending, I suppose, on the source of that wholly subjective evaluation.
Mostly I covered American team sports, but Wimbledon, with its beautifully manicured grass courts—and the imperial presence of Roger Federer—was irresistibly inviting in early summer.
No athlete I had watched from any enviable press seat moved with such mesmerizing fluidity. When I fancied myself as more than a suburban weekend hacker on courts around Essex County, I tried to mimic the Swiss legend, who won Wimbledon eight times before a knee injury forced his retirement in 2022.
Delusional bliss aside, the strength of my game was actually court coverage. During the winter of 2010, at a Florida adult tennis camp while on assignment for the New York Times’ (now defunct) Escapes section, my instructor sneered at the 3.5 quality rating I claimed to have, with one grudging concession: my ability to run.
Flattering myself, I recklessly chased balls into my early 70s, until a fateful morning last June on a red-clay court in Nutley. Having heard enough professional athletes describe the dreaded sensation of a torn Achilles tendon as a violent kick to the back of the ankle, I staggered to a courtside seat, knowing I had suffered my first serious athletic injury.
Surgery on the shredded tendon was followed by weeks in a cumbersome boot, watching summer pass by my window, along with joggers and walkers, while the stairs to the second floor loomed like Mount Everest.
My tennis partners’ sympathetic texts diminished along with the assumption that my willingness to undergo surgical repair meant that my return in the spring was inevitable. Friends suggested I transition to pickleball, which is played mostly on cement, in a more constricted space, and is potentially even harder on aged tendons and ligaments. No thank you.
In weighing my options, I recalled that I had concluded my 2010 story from the adult tennis camp asking why anyone in their mid-50s would risk heat stroke for the sake of a better backhand. The short, defiant answer: because we still could.
Granted, one misstep off a curb could also be ruinous. But I have spent months contemplating more complex questions than the most active among us might ever confront: How much more precious time is there to waste in recovery from surgery? Is it wiser to continue defying age simply because we can, or just surrender to the inevitable fact of encroaching frailty?
My surgeon assured me I could play again, but those summer weeks on the couch had inspired much reflection and prioritization. Walks in the park, workouts at the Y, and casual running seemed more sensible, if less compelling, objectives.
Having achieved them all by early winter, I occasionally chided myself for giving in so quickly and placated myself by reserving the right to change my mind. Still, retirement due to injury remained my intention into early spring, abetted by one sanguine realization: How else would I ever truly emulate Federer?
Harvey Araton is a freelance journalist, author and former New York Times sports columnist.
[RELATED: Playing Pickleball Helped Me Feel Like a Real New Jerseyan]
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