Gail Falkenberg, aged 79, returned to the ITF circuit and suffered a 6-0 6-0 defeat to 19-year-old college tennis player Aspen Schuman in the qualifying draw of the W35 Orlando tournament in Florida. It was Falkenberg's first singles match since 2023.
Return to the ITF Circuit
Falkenberg, a former top-400 player, competed on the professional circuit in the 1980s and retired from tour-level competition in the 1990s. She has continued to play matches on the ITF (now World Tennis) Tour into her 70s.
The American holds a Guinness World Record for being the oldest match-winner on the ITF circuit, achieved a decade ago in a qualifying round in Pelham when she was 69 years old.
Schuman's Run in Orlando
Schuman went on to beat another American, Mary Boyce Deatherage, to qualify for the main draw, where she took out Kajsa Rinaldo Persson before losing to Evialina Laskevich in straight sets.
Falkenberg has not won a professional match since she beat Rosalyn Small 6-0 6-1 in the first qualifying round of an ITF Futures in Pelham, Alabama, on April 10, 2016, when she was 69 years and 85 days old.
Past Matches and Records
She went on to lose to Taylor Townsend in the second round of that event. Townsend has since become a world No. 1 in doubles and a top-50 singles player, completing the career Grand Slam in doubles with partner Katerina Siniakova. Next week, Townsend and Siniakova will compete at the WTA Finals.
Townsend conceded just 12 points to Falkenberg in that second-round qualifying match a decade ago. Falkenberg, then on the cusp of her 70th birthday, told The Wall Street Journal she could still improve: "I know I can keep getting better. There's always something to work on with tennis. I'd love to be playing – and winning – at 70. I'm six months away from that."
Falkenberg made her main-draw debut on the Virginia Slims Tour (now the WTA Tour) aged 38 at the 1986 Brazilian Open. Between 1999 and 2011, she did not play a match, but she has competed in some ITF qualifying draws over the past 15 years. In 2013, she took on former world No. 1 and four-time Major champion Naomi Osaka in the qualifying rounds in Rock Hill, five years before Osaka won her first Grand Slam title; Osaka won 6-0 6-0.
