My Dill-iant Friend

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.

WHEN TODD “HAPPY” Boynton is vetting someone new for his pickleball squadron, he asks them to accept four rules: Don’t get hurt, have fun, don’t be a dick, and “the more the merrier.” The last is not so much a rule as an existential mandate for the 56-year-old Boynton, who approaches possible recruits with the pleasant persistence of a missionary.

So it was with 82-year-old Gabor “Gabe” Temesvari. Two years ago, Temesvari was hitting a tennis ball by himself on a court in the small town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, not far from where Boynton, who lives in the nearby town of Greenfield, was playing pickleball with some friends. Temesvari, a retired schoolteacher, was a lifelong tennis and squash player, but he had never tried pickleball and was reluctant to join the others. However, when Boynton approached him, lent him a paddle, and began hitting with him, Temesvari took to it quickly. “I didn’t think that I was as good as I wanted to be right away, but I said, ‘Eh, I think I can handle this,’ ” he says. That afternoon, he bought a paddle of his own and returned the next day, and most days since. “I admired this guy’s scorpion-sharp shots over the net,” he says of Boynton. “I started calling him ‘Scorpion’ all the time. He hooked me on the sport.”

Today, the two men sit side by side in Boynton’s living room in Greenfield, reminiscing about the meeting that would prove fateful for both of them. Temesvari is lanky, with a helmet of thick white hair; Boynton, a longtime roofer who now owns his own roofing and siding service, is stockier, with light-gray hair that is short on the sides and erupts atop his head in cumulus curls. They both wear T-shirts, Temesvari’s bearing the logo of a pickleball doubles challenge the friends traveled to Washington, D.C., for in 2024—they were one of six intergenerational pairs from across the country selected to participate. Though they’ve known each other only a couple of years, and though nearly three decades separate them, the men speak like old high school friends. When they address each other, they do so ribbingly, but when they’re talking about each other, they speak with complete earnestness and total admiration.

“He played hard-to-get a lot more than he says he did,” Boynton recalls. “There were quite a few days of ‘There’s that old guy over there again, hitting tennis balls.’ ” Boynton would approach him, and Temesvari would say he was content hitting alone. But Boynton and the other pickleball players admired Temesvari’s strong shots, and Boynton was committed to luring him over to the pickleball courts. “I wore him down.”

“Now I wear him down,” Temesvari says.

“He does. He plays tennis in the morning, and then he’ll come play pickleball.” Sometimes, Boynton adds, Temesvari does three-a-days, playing squash after pickleball.

“I try to limit myself,” Temesvari says wryly. “I say, ‘At my age, I’m not supposed to be doing this.’ ”

But studies have shown that pickleball is exactly what older adults should be doing at his age. The sport was invented in the 1960s, but participation was reinvigorated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Americans were seeking new modes of socializing outdoors. Now courts and clubs are popping up across the country, and the Association of Pickleball Players estimated in early 2023 that nearly 50 million Americans of all ages—the average age of players was 34.8—played pickleball in the previous 12 months, with more finding the sport since then. Players young and old are drawn to pickleball’s health benefits, which include improved balance, coordination, flexibility, and cardiovascular health, as well as reduced stress. The low barrier to entry, as well as the frequent rotation of players in and out of games, also makes it unusually social.

Temesvari and Boynton both discovered pickleball at pivotal moments. Temesvari had just lost his wife after nearly 54 years together; he had always joked around and been active, but her death, along with the recent death of his youngest daughter, tested him. “Pickleball has really been my salvation,” he says. “It’s because of all the new friends I’ve made that I’ve been able to go on. My happiest moments now are on the court, in the presence of these people.”

Boynton, who has been playing for three and a half years, was newly sober when he found pickleball. Just before the pandemic began, he had spent a week in an alcohol detox program, and while many Americans started drinking more at the time (heavy alcohol use increased by about 20 percent during the pandemic’s peak years, a USC study found), Boynton hunkered down and sobered up. “If COVID hadn’t hit, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I needed to stay sober for a couple of months, and society said, ‘We’ll stay home.’ ”

When lockdowns eased, pickleball became his social life and an avenue to fitness. A former recreational ice hockey goalie, Boynton reached 350 pounds after he stopped playing and subsequently dealt with alcoholism, depression, and a divorce. As a roofer, he’d found he was loath to exercise after a day outside. “You drink, you eat, whatever else. My path was pretty much figured out for me,” Boynton says—and it was not a healthy one. Pickleball drew him back to exercise after he stopped drinking, and now Temesvari keeps him on the ball. “By hanging out with him, he’s keeping me alive,” he adds, nodding toward Temesvari. “He’s got me working out every day, and it’s fun. I do it because I look forward to it.”

The fun of pickleball belies its heavy-hitting benefits. A 2022 study found that, compared to walking, playing pickleball doubles increased players’ caloric expenditure by 36 percent, their perceived exertion by 44 percent, and their “enjoyment levels” by 150 percent. Research from the 2023 Apple Heart and Movement Study, which used data collected from 82,809 Apple Watch users from November 2019 to November 2021, showed that the benefits of pickleball even mirror those of its higher-intensity cousin, tennis. Both sports were played for a long period of time (on average, people played pickleball for 90 minutes, compared to 81 minutes for tennis), with participants averaging a peak heart rate of 70 percent of their estimated maximum heart rate. Though tennis players averaged a slightly higher 152 beats per minute, pickleball players weren’t far behind at 143 beats per minute.

Pickleball “is incredibly powerful as a means of maintaining your musculoskeletal fitness and your cardiac fitness,” says Calum MacRae, MD, PhD, who led the study. “We saw clear evidence that people were getting their heart rates into the same heart rate zones as when they were playing tennis.” A 2022 study published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity confirmed that pickleball placed older adults (their average age was 62) in moderate to vigorous heart rate zones. (The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week for adults.)

Dr. MacRae was also surprised to find that pickleball players and tennis players were both much less likely to experience depression than the average study participant: Pickleball players were 60 percent less likely to indicate a depressed mood, and tennis players 51 percent less likely. Beyond the positive effects on mood that any exercise can have, one systematic review pointed to pickleball’s inclusiveness as a factor in its effect on players’ well-being. This begins with the game’s accessibility, which applies not just to players of different skill levels but to players of different generations. The sport is generally easy to learn for beginners, it has a smaller court (resulting in less stress on joints compared to other racquet sports) and a lighter ball (which contributes to an overall slower pace of play), and it doesn’t require a ton of equipment. Dr. MacRae also hypothesizes that because pickleball players are closer to each other on the court, compromised hearing is less of a factor, making it ideal for older people.

All of these benefits have been important for Boynton and Temesvari, but their friendship has been the most critical. They doubt they would have crossed paths outside of pickleball, even in a small community like Greenfield. “He’s not my father, but he’s probably within days of the age of my actual father. I love yelling things over the net that I maybe couldn’t yell at my dad,” Boynton says with a laugh. But his connection with Temesvari is different from those with his other friends, even the ones he’s known his whole life. “I still haven’t talked to them as much as I’ve talked to him,” he says.

“We do horse around a lot on the courts, and we do razz each other quite a bit,” adds Temesvari. “But I think humor is essential. Physically, it’s great to move and to stay in shape, but if you can’t laugh and have a good outlook on life, there are too many things that could get you down.”

Shannon Jarrott, PhD, a professor of social work at the Ohio State University who focuses on intergenerational communities, suggests that in addition to keeping players physically fit, the intergenerational connections that pickleball players like Boynton and Temesvari make can help them age more successfully in concrete ways. Spending time with an 82-year-old like Temesvari, who exercises twice a day, is likely to give a younger player a more positive attitude toward aging. And that, Jarrott explains, is vital. “If you’ve got a more negative idea about getting older, you self-limit,” she says. “I might not allow myself to seek out new friendships when I lose friends due to old age. I might assume that the aches and pains I’m dealing with are normal and that nothing can be done about them. I might not advocate for myself when I go to the doctor who says, ‘Well, you’re 70 years old, Shannon; what did you expect?’” Several studies have shown that a negative attitude toward aging can affect our health; one from Yale University’s School of Public Health even showed that it can shorten our lifespan by 7.6 years.

For Temesvari, who says that most of the people he spent his life playing tennis with have passed away, pickleball has meant a new crowd of opponents who match his vim. Devout pickleballers commonly praise the sport for its noncompetitive culture, but Temesvari is an exception. “I do not like to lose,” he says, laughing.

Boynton is as flummoxed by Temesvari’s vigor as he is awed by it. A few months ago, he received a dreaded phone call: Temesvari had been taken to the emergency room from the pickleball courts. Boynton was driving home from a medical appointment, and he grimly headed straight to the hospital.

He found Temesvari in good spirits: He had merely crashed into a post while racing for a top shot. Dehydrated from playing pickleball all morning, he’d fainted. “He knew I’d be mad at him for breaking rule number one, which is don’t get hurt,” Boynton recalls.

“But rule number two is have fun,” Temesvari says, unbothered. “I was having fun.”

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Men’s Health.

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