Henry Young doesn\u2019t mind being asked about his secret to a long, active life \u2013 it comes with the territory when you\u2019re a 101-year-old competitive tennis player. It has its perks, like getting to play on centre court during the Australian Open, but what he does mind is that it\u2019s considered so remarkable that he is playing at all. That he is seen as extraordinary and there must be some magic trick that keeps him going.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat bugs me is that people give up their tennis when they have some kind of injury,\u201d Young says. \u201cI\u2019m a monument to the medical profession because I\u2019ve had so many injuries and I just persevere, and then tennis repairs you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as a sore calf doesn\u2019t have to mean the end of the road for a runner, or a pulled hamstring signal the end of a football career, Young wishes the prospect of injury didn\u2019t deter older people from playing sport. But staring down the barrel of a long rehabilitation process can be daunting, and returning to sport and exercise after injury undeniably gets harder as you age, so an ever-increasing amount of determination is required each time. This is not something Young is lacking.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo new knees, a new hip, pacemaker for my heart, hearing aids in one ear and a cochlear implant in the other and two broken noses,\u201d he says. \u201cYou just can\u2019t keep a good man down.\u201d Young\u2019s doggedness is key to playing for so long \u2013 he just can\u2019t stop, it\u2019s not in his nature.<\/p>\n
Tennis has featured in Young\u2019s life since school, along with rugby and then squash during his time as a fighter pilot in the New Zealand navy. But when he returned to work on the land in South Australia after the second world war, he could only pick up a racket a few times a year. It wasn\u2019t until Young was 70 and retired that tennis became such a big part of his life. Winding around War Memorial Drive in Adelaide 30 years ago, he passed the tennis club with a billboard out front saying \u201cgood tennis players wanted\u201d and thought he\u2019d have a crack.<\/p>\n
Henry Young plays regularly at Memorial Drive Tennis Club in Adelaide. Photograph: Sia Duff\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018you have to get tennis lessons unless you belong to a tennis club,\u2019 and I didn\u2019t want to take lessons,\u201d Young says. So he made up a club. \u201cI said that I belonged to the Inglewood Tennis Club. [Inglewood] was the name of a neighbouring property where we used to play tennis. And they took it.\u201d As Young had suspected, he played well enough to satisfy the recruiters at Memorial Drive so no lessons were required. \u201cThat\u2019s when it started,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m competitive so I started really playing, and making it my sport, which it still is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now a centenarian with three decades of competitive tennis under his belt, Young is preparing for the ITF Masters Championships in Croatia in October. He plays three to four times a week, often with his friend and sometimes doubles partner Gerry Prideaux, and spends a little time in the gym at his retirement complex. That training regime is about to diversify further. \u201cI\u2019ve bought myself a rowing machine,\u201d Young says. \u201cI\u2019ve set it up next to the window \u2026 so every morning I\u2019m going to do 20 minutes rowing in the Adelaide hills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Young made history in 2023 as the first 100-year-old to play in the World Masters Individual Championships. \u201cIt\u2019s only recently that they\u2019ve started to make it a bit easier for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to have to play down in the 80-year-olds [age category]. But then they made it 85, now they\u2019ve got the 90s, and some of the countries are even going to 95.\u201d He\u2019s sure it won\u2019t be long before there are enough players over 100 to have their own age group too. \u201cI\u2019m doing my little bit to persuade people to keep on trying, because we\u2019re all living longer these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Henry Young is preparing for the ITF Masters Championships in Croatia in October. Photograph: Sia Duff\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Young is happy to share his advice for staying healthy as you age and swears by \u201cwholesome thoughts\u201d and a balanced diet with a twist. \u201cI watch my diet, and part of my diet is that I drink three two-litre [cartons] of Farmers Union iced coffee every week,\u201d he says. His attachment to iced coffee is so strong that he\u2019s always itching to get back home to it when he travels interstate. The coffee is the outlier in an otherwise fairly standard menu. \u201cI like everything, I like my meat and my fish and vegetables \u2026 I make sure that I get that full variety,\u201d he says. \u201cI snack on nuts during the day and I\u2019ve got my iced coffee, and that really keeps me fit.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Young\u2019s number one tip for people of any age is no secret at all. \u201cI would encourage everybody to play tennis,\u201d he says, claiming the medical profession supports his view that it\u2019s the best ball sport for you. \u201cIn tennis, win or lose, you gain something. It\u2019s very nice to be able to say to the man at the other end of the tennis court, \u2018it was a good win, but you had to work for it,\u2019 and you both laugh. They\u2019re the ones that you remember, the games that you really had to fight for, and that\u2019s competition \u2026 it\u2019s good for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henry Young doesn\u2019t mind being asked about his secret to a long, active life \u2013 it comes with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-184756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}