My father told me: “if you become a tennis professional just make sure you are in the top hundred”
Roger Federer
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Miguel Carbó is one hundred years old.
And as we sit down to talk, he asks me:
–What has Feliciano López done today? Has he won or lost?
(Well, on the day of our interview, the Mallorca Open was taking place, and the veteran tennis player from Madrid had already announced that he planned to retire the moment he lost a match).
The answer:
-Well I do not know. I think Feliciano López was playing at this time.
“Aaah, okay. It’s just that I follow sports all the time, you know?
Miguel, one of his five children, and Isa, one of his 17 grandchildren, agree (he also has 15 great-grandchildren: if the whole family is together, there are 52 members, they tell me). We have occupied a reserved room at the David Lloyd Club Turó, on Diagonal, and we drink water.
Miguel, the son, says:
-My father has a very fresh head. Every day he solves the sudoku, the chess problem and the crossword puzzle. If he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t stay calm.
Miguel Carbó, our hundred-year-old protagonist, has brought a wooden Dunlop racket, with a tiny head, and several newspaper clippings (he confesses that he has been a subscriber to La Vanguardia for many years), and shows me images from his youth, for example of 1953, when he played doubles matches with Manuel Rincón. Defending the Turó club, then in Via Augusta, Miguel Carbó had been Catalan doubles champion six times.
We talk about tennis in black and white.
–When you were a child there was not much tennis in our country. How did you start with this?
-In our family almost everyone played. My father, who was a doctor, and my uncles did it. They played in private houses. My grandmother had a large garden on Escoles Pies street. I didn’t play very often but, when I finished high school, my father made me a member of the Turó. I arrived a little late, to be honest. At 18 years old, many tennis players are already trained.
–And what did you dream of? With being professional?
-Professional? At that time there were none. And those who professionalized paid for it. Pedro Masip, who had combined tennis and Basque pelota, became a professional pelotari and was no longer allowed to play Wimbledon or the Davis Cup. Later Manolo Santana and Manolo Orantes appeared and with both of them everything changed. But by then I had already retired.
-And then why did you play?
He played what he could. Because first there was work, huh?
(Trained as a textile engineer, he worked in five companies: he was in the textile industry and also in banking and investment advice; at some point he had 6,000 workers under his charge).
And when did you play?
I didn’t have office hours. It was like an external. I trained at noon, from 2 to 4 p.m.
-And eat?
-He did not eat. He trained me, and then a sandwich and a banana and at 4:00 p.m., back to work. I dreamed of playing in the 1st category. There entered the twelve best in the country. I was one breath away from getting it. I got to be the 15th. I was also one step away from playing the doubles in Davis in 1953. We got to train with the first team, but in the end it was Emilio Martínez and Jaime Bartrolí.
And what did he need to achieve it?
I had a good backhand and a good volley. But my serve was fatal. I never developed it. In that Turó we did not have a good teacher. At the RCTB, Gimeno and Ventura did teach how to take the kids out.
And when did you leave it?
-In 1955 I already began to notice that my legs did not give me enough to reach the drop-offs. We built a little house in Llavaneres and my wife (María Isabel is 93 years old) convinced me to switch to golf. I played it until I was 92 years old. Then the muscles didn’t respond to me anymore. But you know what?
-Tell me…
–At night, many times I keep dreaming that I am playing tennis or golf. Hey, look at a question: yesterday was the athletics meeting in Ostrava. That boy, Saúl Ordóñez, won the 800m, right?
(It’s true: Ordóñez won that race.)
