Love of tennis leads Henderson man to National Senior Games

He’s been playing since he was 14 years old and, at age 79, still gets in three to four matches a week. And he’s competing in this year’s edition of the National Senior Games, which kicked off Friday and will run through July 18 in Pittsburgh.

Tennis actually isn’t Chao’s first sport.

A native of China, he was living in Hong Kong as a child of 11 when he made the finals in badminton and table tennis tournaments. His parents were athletes, too, his mother playing tennis and his father tennis and lawn bowling at the Craigengower Cricket Club.

So, their son was a little miffed when, instead of supporting him, they took a yacht cruise with some friends. He finished second. “I purposely lost,” Chao says wryly with a trace of resentment, “because they weren’t there.”

‘Tennis built confidence’

After the family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1954, the trio found themselves in the same racket.

His parents would drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to play tennis with friends at the Berkeley Rose Garden, and one day Chao’s mother suggested her son hit a few balls with her. It seemed a likely sport for him.

“I was too small for football and too short for basketball,” Chao says with a grin. “And too slow for track.”

He didn’t initially make the tennis team at Lowell High School in San Francisco. The coach told him there were 16 people on the team, and in order to make it, he’d have to beat them.

Chao started out playing No. 16 and worked his way up to No. 1. He played on the team his junior year but not as a senior, because he wanted time for other things. He played in all-city matches at Golden Gate Park, though, winning both the 16-and-under and 18-and-under groups.

He’d go on to attend the University of California, Berkeley, but didn’t play tennis there. “I had to support myself,” Chao said.

But tennis had already made its mark on the boy who was painfully shy by nature.

“Tennis built confidence, and that carried through my whole life,” Chao said.

As a young man, he lectured at the planetarium in San Francisco, and he had to correct attendees who instinctively addressed him as “Doctor.”

‘You feel younger’

“When I was young, I was a dreamer,” Chao said. “And I accomplished every one of them.”

He studied physics and became a mechanical engineer and an electrical engineer. He helped design the 747 while at Boeing and the L-1011 when at Lockheed, and Chao later worked for IBM.

He was a deacon in his church, performed in theater and had a band that played Hawaiian music. He wrote plays about his father, his mother and himself, and he donated a kidney to his first wife.

No wonder Chao is being honored as one of 28 Humana Game Changers, among the 12,000 athletes who will compete in the senior games.

Julie Mascari, Humana’s Northeast Region president, said the Game Changers program is part of the company’s commitment to healthy and active aging and wellness for seniors. These 28 seniors, she said, exemplify healthy aging and inspire other seniors.

“They are the epitome of living an active life,” she said.

The games were founded in 1987. Chao first competed in them in 2009, when they were in Palo Alto, California, and won a silver in mixed doubles. He lived in Hawaii then and moved to Henderson two years ago.

Chao credits tennis and an active life for all he’s accomplished, and he has a mission he’ll carry out at the games.

“I want to encourage seniors to stay active,” he said. “You feel younger.”