Given that it is Labor Day weekend in the United States, work seems a fitting topic—not the money and mechanics of dueling tours comprised of well-off professional golfers but the nature of competing or performing past one’s prime.
Since late July, three legendary women have shown what this can look like: singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, 78, on stage at the Newport Folk Festival seven years after a brain aneurysm in her first full-length public concert in two decades; JoAnne Carner, 83, shooting her age for the fourth and fifth times in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open; Serena Williams, 40, upsetting the No. 2 seed then surviving five match points before losing a third-round match Friday night in her likely U.S. Open farewell.
I’m of an age where it is natural to admire the experienced continue striving for the extraordinary, but I’ve been drawn to such examples for a long time, whether it was trying to will a few hits and clean basket catches for Willie Mays during his epilogue with the New York Mets; crossing fingers and toes for Julius Boros in 1973 as he contended for a third U.S. Open title at age 53; rooting hard for Sonny Jurgensen once he finally had a supporting cast in Washington burgundy and gold.
Those three examples didn’t turn out as I’d hoped. Mays wasn’t fleet and sure anymore. Boros finished four strokes behind Johnny Miller and his 63 at Oakmont. Jurgensen got hurt then lost favor with George Allen and the starting quarterback spot to Billy Kilmer.
Aging athletes are vulnerable athletes; memories and past successes provide fuel, but time is a cudgel. That equation makes things interesting.
Consider the 1991 U.S. Open and Jimmy Connors’ improbable run to the semifinals at Flushing Meadows when he was 39, or Tom Watson’s oh-so-close Open Championship in 2009 when he was 59. That unexpectedly hard bounce on Watson’s approach shot to the 72nd hole at Turnberry sabotaged the ultimate in victorious encores 32 years after he outdueled Jack Nicklaus there.
Nicklaus’ sixth Masters victory at 46 and Tiger Woods’ fifth green jacket at 43 after a spinal fusion are anomalies. The stars aligned for them those two Sundays at Augusta National as they turned back competitors decades younger, just as they did for Phil Mickelson when he won the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island less than a month before turning 51, the oldest winner of a professional golf major. (Michael Scott was 54 when he won The (British) Amateur Championship in 1933.)
The clips of Mitchell this summer in Rhode Island, where she had first performed in 1967, were moving and poignant. “This wasn’t the first new Joni to emerge in the 21st century,” wrote NPR music critic Ann Powers. “Two decades ago, Mitchell had surprised her fans with a lower register made evocatively dark by years of cigarette smoking. Here was another revelatory voice, showing the marks of her recent health struggles and her determination to recover, stunning in its honesty.”
Whatever has been diminished by age and health, as Powers noted, “Mitchell’s jazz-informed sense of phrasing and way with a story remains intact.” That description made me think of Sam Snead and his way with a golf club on a fall day in 1996, when he was 84 with a bad shoulder and bad eye to lighten my wallet of twenty bucks, because the greats don’t forget how.
Carner, already the oldest to compete in a USGA championship, was playing in her fourth U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which was established in 2018 and wasn’t held in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you imagine the success Carner would have had in a Senior Open had it been conducted when she was in her 50s and 60s? As it is, Carner has more USGA titles (eight) than any other woman, with only Bobby Jones and Woods (nine apiece) having more. It is a hypothetical much like conjuring what Snead might have achieved on a senior tour if one had existed in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was still doing things like tie for third in the PGA when he was 62.
Rounds of 83 and 83 at 83 are only a footnote in Carner’s grand career, but they should be accompanied by smiling emoji not an asterisk. To focus on her missing the cut is to miss the point.
Twenty-five years after claiming her first U.S. Open title, Williams wasn’t back in Queens for participation points. Despite having played only a handful of matches in 2022—and not showing much brilliance—heading into what Williams declared was her swan song, she summoned some inspiring form in winning two matches and fighting hard in a third. Ajla Tomljanovic proved too much despite all the pro-Serena energy in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium, but Williams took the match to a third set and gave her all even after her opponent built a comfortable lead, at times exhibiting grit and power indistinguishable from that on display during her 23 Grand Slam singles victories.
Undeniably, there is a nostalgic appeal when watching someone perform admirably past their peak. In doing what they can still do, athletes and artists make us remember what our more ordinary selves could do decades earlier and prompt us what might still be possible, even as we go to the first tee smelling of liniment and struggling to remember last week’s swing thought.
Beyond sentimentality or motivation, there is simple beauty in seeing someone older put forth the effort and marshal his or her talent, even when those skills aren’t quite what they once were. In Joni, JoAnne and Serena, there is reason to smile and cause for hope.