Thomas Muster, the 1995 French Open champion, is attempting something unique on the men's tennis tour — coming back from an 11-year absence from the tour. The fact the feisty Austrian left-hander is 43 years old makes the effort all the more remarkable.
Muster lost Tuesday in his first match back against a fellow Austrian at the ATP event in Vienna but played reasonably well in the second set and said afterward that his form had given him confidence for what he is going to try to achieve next year — a full return to the ATP tour with a plan to play upward of 20 tournaments.
"I hated tennis when I stopped in 1999," said Muster. "Now I love it. And as my body feels good, I want to play as much as possible."
If Muster survives 10 tournaments at his age, he will be doing extremely well. The tour is a tougher place than it was when he left it, and the game is far more physically demanding. But Muster, a complex and multifaceted character, played his tennis like a commando on a training exercise and won many matches through sheer guts and force of personality.
That personality had another side. After matches, Muster would retire to his hotel room and pursue his hobby of painting landscapes on linen and silk.
His retirement took him to the Gold Coast in Australia, where he flew his own helicopter up and down the Queensland coast. After his marriage ended, he returned to Europe and bought into a hotel complex in the Austrian mountains that had its own vineyards. Muster knows his wine, too.
But now it's going to be all tennis for a while, and there may be some records broken. The word being put about on various websites is that, when he lost to Andreas Haider-Maurer, Muster failed to break Jimmy Connors' record for being the oldest player on the tour to have won a match at ATP level. Connors was 42 when he reached the quarterfinals on grass at Halle in Germany in 1995.
But, it seems some record keepers have short memories. Many of the stats issued by publicists only go back as far as 1990, which was the year a political realignment in the game saw the old ATP tour reinvent itself. But history prior to 1990 cannot be erased. And if one tried, one would be doing a great disservice to Ken Rosewall, the legendary Australian whose career stretched from 1953-80, a span that included eight Grand Slam titles.
Rosewall was older than Connors when he won his last title, at the Gunze Open in Tokyo, in 1977. And, incredibly, he was 46 when he entered the ATP indoor event in Melbourne in 1980 and beat the big-serving American Butch Walts — who was ranked 49th at the time — in straight sets. Rosewall's ever-immaculate backhand and stinging volleys simply dismantled Walts' game.
So this is the benchmark for Muster to aim at: A title at the age of 43 and at least one win on the tour at the age of 46. He will have a lot of fun trying, and youngsters such as Ernests Gulbis, who was scheduled to play Muster in Vienna before he withdrew, will try not to remind themselves that they weren't even born when Muster won his first ATP title at Hilversum in Holland in 1986.
