Fung-A-Ling still courting at 100

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They say tennis is the sport for a lifetime.

In Claude Fung-A-Ling’s case, that means … a century.

The Montrealer, who came from British Guyana more than 80 years ago and never left, turns 100 Sunday.

And there’s every possibility he spent part of the day on the tennis court.

As sharp and introspective as a man decades younger, Fung-A-Ling still gets out on the court at the Dorval Tennis Club a couple of times a week.

He has played the game for nearly 90 years. And he has studied the finer details of racket science, movement and concentration like the engineer he is.

From British Guyana … to Montreal

Fung-A-Ling picked up the game as a child in British Guyana, with a wooden racket that had to be imported from England. It started because he saw people playing it, as often happens. Later, he learned to love it because he appreciated the odd coupling of movement and concentration.

He came to Canada by boat during World War II to study at McGill University. It’s a boat, he notes, that was torpedoed by the Germans on its return journey.

The moral of that story is this: if you want to live to be 100, you have to have a little luck and timing along the way.

Through his career as a structural engineer, marriage and three children with wife Hilda (they’ve been married 67 years, and he was on the tennis court when they met) and now, 35 years in retirement, Fung-A-Ling and the game have been as one.

We talked to him about tennis, life, and the secret to longevity.

Here’s Fung-A-Ling on the current generation of tennis stars.

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