A very nice picture of our Belgian number 1.
By Yves Simon, in Hamburg
Lthe back is round, the slow pace, the archaic warm-up method and the old-time racket, but hats off to Leonid Stanislavskyi! At 98, and according to the Guinness Book, the Ukrainian is officially the oldest competitive tennis player in the world. Supported by a Ukrainian businessman, he has played in senior tournaments around the world since the age of 80! And he uses his little notoriety to hit the ball with the professionals of the circuit. This week, in Hamburg, he exchanged some balls with Sascha Zverev (before the German got injured …) and with David Goffin!
“I’d like to play like him at his age,” commented the Belgian No. 1. “It was nice, but I didn’t really know what to do so that he didn’t try too hard …”
In October 2021, Leonid (an engineer in his early childhood who built warplanes in Siberia to fight the Nazis) had made his dream come true by meeting Rafael Nadal at his academy in Mallorca. He was far from imagining that four months later there would be war in his country.
At first he did not want to leave his city of Kharkiv, but pressed by his relatives, he ended up fleeing to take refuge in Vilnius, helped by the Lithuanian Tennis Federation. It had taken him three days to reach Slovakia, initially with the help of a neighbor. He hopes to become a centenarian and, above all, to survive the terrible conflict that is shaking his country. With some other great projects in mind, such as the meeting with Roger Federer and Iga Swiatek who continues to wear the Ukrainian banner on his cap.
–
