Tennis: 90-year-old answers Rest of World call to US tournament

Max Gunn. Picture / Martin Sykes

An international call-up can be a long time coming - but for a 90-year-old?

Bet on it.

Long-time Auckland tennis guru Max Gunn has finally got the nod and is off to trade shots with America's best.

Gunn, who turned 90 late last year, has been included in a 10-strong Rest of the World team to play the US at the Palm Springs Tennis Club on April 2-3.

He will then stay on to play the week-long USTA National 90 Hardcourt Championships.

All players must be 90 or older. There is a waiting list for an event which is anything but a friendly hit-up.

They will play best-of-three sets singles and doubles, with players from Australia, Mexico, Germany, Canada and Italy joining Gunn in the international line-up.

Gunn initially hoped he might be joined at the tournament by his regular playing partner, 96-year-old Charlie Langdon, but Langdon is staying home with his sick wife.

Such a trip might seem daunting to many of his age. Not for Gunn.

"There is nothing better than getting on a plane, having a couple of Scotches and relaxing," said Gunn, who with his wife Chisne has clocked up more air miles than most people could even dream about.

A regular visitor to a chamber music festival in Austria - a side trip he and his wife have made on many of their 22 visits to Wimbledon - Gunn has been around tennis courts most of his life.

"I first played as a 5-year-old at Caroline Bay in Timaru," Gunn said.

He moved to Auckland in 1924 and later joined his brother Jack, Mark Otway and David Little in the Gunn and Gunn team who won the 1950 Pascoe Cup.

As well as his regular hit-ups with Langdon, Gunn has been receiving professional help from New Zealand Davis Cup captain Bruce Derlin.

"I was absolutely buggered," said Gunn, who is probably better known around Auckland as the scourge of companies he has confronted at annual meetings in going to bat for shareholders' rights.

"I hit with him for half-an-hour at a time," Derlin said. "He didn't stop. He is amazing."

Gunn, it seems, never gives up on anything.

"I have never stopped working. I left the accountancy firm, now Prince and Partners, when I thought I would be an embarrassment. For the last 28 years my charity has been doing free accountancy for widows."

But, one feels, charity will stay at home when makes his international debut a world and 85 years away from those first strokes in Timaru.