Super Seniors review – the near-miraculous feats of tennis

Former pro Dan Lobb’s perky documentary follows the irrepressible athletes as they compete for glory in their age groups’ world championships

Three sinewy octogenarians and one unfeasibly hale-looking nonagenarian are the focus of this perky documentary looking at tennis players still holding their own in a late tiebreak with father time. A mixture of ex-pros and dogged late starters who picked the game up in middle age, they all converge at the International Tennis Federation senior world championships in Croatia; a tournament with more matches than Wimbledon. As serial winner King van Nostrand – a former maths teacher who was 85 at the time of filming – points out, small margins of age count; at a given point, a younger player of inferior ability will statistically start beating their older betters.

A stooping Floridian with a rapier grin, Van Nostrand has dominated the seniors circuit winning a record-breaking 43 titles and is still not tired of winning. His doubles partner is 87-year-old John Powless, a varsity-league and pro player whose beautiful stroke and attaboy magnanimity are intact, but whose energy is being sapped by chemo. Refusing to acknowledge her age (82), Etty Marouani is a coquettish former Parisian model who took up tennis at 42. Her girlish hair ribbon belies a killer determination to add the world title to her French seniors one. Most remarkable is 95-year-old Ukrainian Leonid Stanislavskyi, an amateur who picked up a racket to keep body and mind ticking over. He’s generally resigned to being battered by his juniors, with only two other nonagenarian competitors available. “Even if I lose, I’ll come third,” he says.