This article is part of Racquet Sport Nation—a series of stories that explores the life-enhancing power of racquet sports, from tennis to pickleball to padel, today. Read the rest of the stories here.
LAST SUMMER, THERE was a good chance you noticed how horny people were for tennis. Partly thanks to Zendaya and the erotically charged, racquet-smashing boys in Challengers (which premiered last April), the Internet became feverish for the sport. Suddenly, we had influencers and celebrities picking up a racquet for the first time or showing off the forehand they learned as a kid. Then the tennis-core clothing trend exploded, making me seriously consider whether I should purchase a cable-knit sweater. At my neighborhood tennis courts in Brooklyn, the battle to get time on a court felt as intense as a Sinner-Alcaraz matchup.
Come September, the craze manifested at the 2024 US Open, which smashed its attendance record by attracting more than 1 million people to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Hats with the event’s simple logo and a swooshing tennis ball were everywhere in New York City, with an estimated 200,000 sold.
I’d been to a dozen US Opens before, but the fans at this year’s edition seemed doubly fired up. Sitting in the stands at Arthur Ashe Stadium for an early-round match, I overheard so many conversations in which people new to the game asked questions about the scoring, the footwork, and who the players were and where they were from. What stood out most during the match, though, was the huge slogan plastered on the court, on the Jumbotron, and basically on every billboard across the center’s grounds:
The world’s healthiest sport.
“Is that a thing?” I asked my boyfriend. With all the superlatives floating around tennis—including a resurfaced study that suggests tennis may be the best sport for increasing your lifespan—it seemed fitting that the United States Tennis Association, which organizes the US Open, would lay down this claim, too. But honestly, as someone who has played tennis his whole life and wrote a book about the sport, I just had to laugh. Yes, tennis is one of my favorite pastimes, but it’s also an infuriating one that strains and can even break my body if I’m not careful.
“Sure, why not?” he responded.
A few days later, when I went out to play with a friend, fighting to hit the ball harder and with more spin, hoping for better footwork, I kept thinking about that slogan. Is this really the world’s healthiest sport? If I keep at this mentally vexing and physically brutal game as I have since I was 9 years old, will I live a longer life?
LET’S JUST GET this out of the way: There is no agreed-upon ranking of the healthiest sports. But if you’re one of the millions of people worldwide who play tennis, you may find yourself with some serious health benefits.
Tennis involves a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Aerobic exercises use oxygen to perform continuous movements (cardio), while anaerobic exercises use energy stored in your muscles for quicker bursts of high-intensity movement. In tennis, your aerobic system gets a serious push as you’re running, repositioning yourself, and bouncing on your feet waiting for a return. Meanwhile, every stroke requires classic gym-built power (anaerobic energy). Both types of exercise have positive effects on cardiovascular health, and good cardio health has been proven to lead to increased blood flow (check), improved brain function (check, check), and a significantly lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease (check, check, check).
So does this mean playing tennis gives us a better shot at living longer? The best empirical evidence we have to support this is a viral 2018 study in which researchers observed 8,577 Danish residents, ages 20 to 93, from 1991 to 2017. Those who regularly played tennis lived an average of 9.7 years (!) longer than their sedentary counterparts. And those tennis gains beat out the gains from other activities: badminton (6.2 years), soccer (4.7), cycling (3.7), swimming (3.4), jogging (3.2), and calisthenics (3.1). The category called “health club activities,” which included the treadmill, elliptical, stair-climber, stationary bike, and weight rack, added only 1.5 years in the studied population.
While the researchers did not include several sports popular in the U.S. (I wish they had looked at basketball, baseball, or, hell, even pickleball), and the participants didn’t necessarily play just one sport (so it’s unclear if tennis alone was responsible for the gains), the findings show there’s a strong association between playing tennis and living significantly longer. As a possible explanation, the researchers pointed to the potential impact of social interaction and community, as the activities showing the greatest increase in lifespan require two or more people. Social connection is strongly linked to longevity, as it can help keep loneliness, which raises the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, at bay. “Those connections generally get associated with purpose, and it’s the purpose that keeps people going when times get rough,” says Deborah Kado, MD, a professor of medicine specializing in geriatrics and a codirector of the Stanford Center on Longevity.
Then again, you could argue that playing any sport is social and therefore healthy. But what makes tennis (and all racquet sports, for that matter) so next-level isn’t just that you’re moving with your buddies but how you’re moving with them. In the gym, we often move in the sagittal plane, or forward and backward (think walking, running, bench presses, deadlifts). Many sports, like basketball and football, also push us to move mostly in one direction, while only occasionally changing direction. Racquet sports, however, force us to utilize all planes of movement. We can’t help but shuffle from side to side along the baselines, and every serve, forehand, backhand, and volley demands that we rotate through our hips. Rotational movement in particular results in improved mobility, agility, and power, says David Otey, CSCS, a Men’s Health advisor. This helps prevent pain and injury in the long term—the real key to longevity.
“But what makes TENNIS(and all racquet sports, for that matter) so NEXT-LEVEL isn’t just that you’re MOVING with your buddies but HOW you’re moving with them.”
One 2019 study, which compared 43 tennis players and 47 nonplayers, ages 18 to 65, found that those who played tennis had vastly better grip strength and knee strength than their nonplaying counterparts. Grip strength is a research-backed biomarker for longevity, says Dr. Kado, as poor strength has been linked to an increased risk of death, and the easiest way to determine if someone has adequate muscle strength and function is to test their grip strength. The researchers did not pinpoint why the tennis players had better musculoskeletal function, but Otey has a simple explanation: Tennis pushes your body in lots of directions—and pushes it hard. “This leads to more integrity in your tendons and ligaments and everything else, because [playing] is going to add stress,” he says. “And that stress is going to add an adaptation to the body to make it get stronger and more durable to sustain playing tennis.”
Unfortunately, this stress can also lead to injuries (tennis elbow, anyone?), which is why it’s critical to incorporate strength training into your routine. “Sometimes people will go, ‘It’s going to affect my tennis game,’ ” says Otey. “Well, no, not lifting will affect your tennis game, because then you won’t be as strong as you need to be when it comes to sustaining that. The people who are more prone to getting injured are those who don’t work out and don’t do these things on the back end. That can go for tennis, that can go for marathon runners, that can go for any leisurely everyday sport.”
So, yeah, playing tennis—and all racquet sports—is pretty good for you and me. Over the years, I had never really thought about the impact tennis could have on my longevity, but now I’m going to continue to pick up my racquet for as long as my body lets me. After all, I feel my sharpest, most pliable, and most social when the sport is a regular activity in my life. And who knows, maybe next I’ll get in deep with the padel community. Just don’t ask me about pickleball—that’s for you to explore here.
Fashion Director: Ted Stafford
Prop Styling: JJ Chan
Grooming: Charles McNair
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Men's Health.
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