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Age is the
rage
Posted: Wed July 15,
1998
In a world where we all seek so to stay young, being good
at sports, even as we grow old, is the ultimate facelift.
Long before Viagra, there was
golf.
Larry Holmes, age 48, is going to fight George Foreman, age
50. Jack Nicklaus, age 58, almost won the Masters. He will
not be at Royal Birkdale this week, at the British Open,
passing up a major for the first time in more than 38
years, but then, he
immediately went out and shot nine-under in the seniors'
tournament this past week, showing those 50-year-old kids a
thing or
two.
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Even at age 58, Jack Nicklaus is hardly putt-putting along.
(Robert Beck)
| Old guys play this golf tour of theirs every week for
millions in prize money. Likewise, the old tennis players
have their own caravan now, with Jimmy Connors acting like
a naughty, middle-aged
Peter Pan who had to grow up, sorta. Now, too, the old
women's tennis players have a tour, cleverly designed so
Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova always have to meet
each other. No we can't quite have it the way
we were ... but we can try and make it the way
it
was.
And if we're politically correct now, and we don't call 'em
"old-timers" anymore, we get by with euphemistic
names like "seniors" and "classics" and
"legends."
Moreover, many of the best players—what we used to
dismiss as "veterans"—continue now in the
real major leagues well past the time when they were
supposed, by natural law, to be finished. Nolan Ryan was
setting strikeout records in his 40s. Carl Lewis
and Linford Christie won Olympic long jump and sprint gold
medals in their 30s. The last
NBA playoffs was essentially a case of one 35-year-old man on
Chicago outplaying a 34-year-old man and a 36-year-old man
on
Utah.
Now in the movies recently, there has been a backlash from
having old fogeys like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford and
Michael Douglas cast opposite love-interest actresses
almost half their
age. We sense how foolish that is, how artificial ... how,
above all, so undeserving it is for silly old graybeards to be
assigned the hearts of the likes of Gwyneth
Paltrow.
But if an older
athlete can outplay a kid head-to-head on the field, or if a war
baby can still shoot par or pack a knockout punch, then, by
God, that's different. That's empirical accomplishment.
That's walking the walk—and in a population growing
older all the time, it's
also becoming genuine role-model
stuff.
It's not, either, as if sports were turning old. On the
contrary, children are mastering games at younger ages all
the time, and a few sports—notably tennis and figure
skating and gymnastics—are suffering for being too
much the province of shallow,
insipid
teeners.
But, still, there
has been an attitudinal sea change—both among athletes
and spectators—for we no longer accept it as gospel
that the prize must go to the young person at the peak of
physical performance. No—especially us older types
believe that the diminution of physical
skills can be more outweighed by canniness and conniving.
Beyond that, I can sense the belief that physical prowess
does have a longer life than we used to credit it. Yes,
youth must still be wasted on the young, but no, youth need
not be wasted on
sports. Not
anymore.
Ah, to be a sprightly 55 again and teeing it up at the
British
Open.
These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National
Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by
CNN/SI.
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