Keeley Rules or How to Play Tennis on Social Security

Four guys walk onto a tennis court. They're wearing white tennis clothes and carrying bags with racquet handles sticking out, but surely they're not going to play—they're too old! If you added their ages together the sum would be over three hundred! Nevertheless they pull out their racquets and a can of balls, station themselves on opposing service lines, and begin to warm up, first just dinking easy shots to one another, then gradually moving back and hitting harder, until one of them says, "Let's play!"

These four turn up every Sunday afternoon—outdoors in summer, indoors in winter—and play the same game with the same partners. Let me introduce them: on the other side of the net, the guy in the deuce court is someone you might recognize, a television presenter before he retired: we'll call him The Talking Head. His partner had been the editor of a national weekly magazine; he retired early, and is younger than the others: we'll call him The Kid. On this side, the ad-court player was a college professor once, and before that a Marine pilot: we'll call him The Old Marine. His deuce-court partner, the one with the grizzled beard, is a novelist and translator of Greek poetry. We could call him The Translator, or maybe just The Greek, but since he invented the rules they're about to play by, we'd better call him by his name: he's Keeley.

The game they begin looks at first like any tennis game: serve, return, lob, volley, slam into the net, another serve. The Kid is serving: he hits a hard left-handed spinner that catches the outside corner of the service court. Keeley can't touch it, and doesn't even try. "Fault!" he cries in a cheerful voice. The Old Marine chides him: "Isn't that a little aggressive? He didn't mean to serve an ace."

"What should I say, then?"

"Why say anything? Or maybe, 'Nice serve.'"

The Kid serves again, this time easier and without the spin; Keeley returns it and play goes on. A young man on the next court has observed the point. At a pause in the play he edges up to The Talking Head, who is playing net, and says, sotto voce: "That first serve was way in; you've got a problem with the old guy with the beard."

"Oh, no," The Talking Head replies with a grin, "we're playing Keeley Rules."

For those of you who don't know what Keeley-Rules tennis is, let me explain. Keeley had been a tennis player in his youth, but had stopped playing years ago, until The Old Marine coaxed him back onto the courts. They're old friends, and they liked playing together; they came to know one another's games and bodily ailments—how their knees were beginning to go, and how their hand-eye coordinaton wasn't what it used to be. But it was still fun, being out there in the sunshine, knocking the ball around.

Keeley is the younger of the two, and he is known to take the occasional lesson from the local pro, whereas The Old Marine is a public-court player who has never had much of a game; so Keeley always wins. That bothers him, beating his old friend in every match. One day he stops in the middle of play and walks to the net.

"I've been thinking," he says, "let's not keep score today. Let's just play."

"How can we play tennis and not keep score? How will we know when we're through?"

"Our knees will tell us. I'll serve six points—that's roughly one game—and then you serve six." He walks back to the base line and the game goes on. Keeley Rule No. 1: Don't keep score.

Rule No. 1 changed more than the scoring: if there was to be no score, then there would be no competition. And if there was no competition, the...