‘I’m playing because I feel joy’: At 40, Sarah Pang looks to return to professional tennis

SINGAPORE: At an age where most professional tennis players would be hanging up their racquets, Sarah Pang is getting back into the swing of it.

The 40-year-old, who is one of Singapore’s few professional tennis players, was only the eighth Singaporean woman to break into the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings – a feat she achieved in 2019.

As she aims to return to the pro circuit, she has a bigger goal beyond hitting a certain ranking: Playing freely.

Pang recently took a year off to care for her ill mother.

“When you step back out on court after a monster year like that, the playing comes with a different lens,” she told CNA’s A Letter to Myself podcast last week.

“I think because you've healed so much more of your inner child – for me, it has been the joy of realising I'm not playing to prove anymore. I'm playing because I want to. I'm playing because I feel joy. It's actually fun.”

One question Pang gets asked is why she wants to continue past what is generally considered an athlete’s professional prime.

But she said sports science today allows them to go on well into their 40s. For her, that means a medley of activities like strength and conditioning, osteopathy, pilates, meditation – and even speaking to her therapist.

“We've just not, in Singapore, caught up with that awareness. So, for me, 40 is still young,” she added.

Pang, who was a top badminton junior in her teens, picked professional tennis over golf at 19 when her father told her he felt these two sports gave athletes more autonomy.

Her mother had had a massive stroke when she was 18, and her father had retired as a secondary school teacher by then.

As the fifth of six children, the burden of supporting the family fell on her older siblings’ shoulders. Her