When Gardnar Mulloy was 9 years old or so, his father and uncle built a clay court in the backyard of the family home in Miami. The boy swatted tennis balls with them, then found players his own age at a local park. He was still at it in his 90s, playing senior tournament tennis, having long outlasted his opponents from the days when he was one of the most brilliant doubles players of his time.
Over the years he won more than 125 national tournaments, most of them in senior play, a cause he championed.
“We talk of tennis as a lifetime sport,” the Hall of Famer Tony Trabert once said of Mulloy.