PINECREST, Fla. — Eighty five years young and still serving up wins, a woman in South Florida is showing everyone that age is no limit.

Donna Fales is a decorated tennis player and while her name may be no secret, her mindset is a hard code to crack for someone her age.

“If you stop moving, you’ll stop walking,” Fales told Local 10 News.  

Five thousand miles away in Bol, Croatia, super seniors from all over the world took to the red clay courts to see who is the best.

“You can arguably say I’m the best 85-year-old in the world,” Fales said.

Fales earned those bragging rights

Representing the USA at the International Tennis Federations Masters, she claimed three championships in categories 85+ singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.

She also earned a Grand Slam of her own.

“I’ve been playing tennis since I was 10 years old,” Fales said.

She’s a South Florida tennis legend, as a quick Google search will tell you.

Fales was once a top 10 U.S. player in the 1960s.

She won national clay and mixed doubles titles and was a quarter finalist at the French Wimbledon.

In 1967, Fales made it to the then U.S. National Championships for doubles where she’d share a court with tennis icon Billie Jean King -- a name now in history for fighting for equal prize money.

Almost 60 years later, Fales is still serving up victories at her home court at Pinecrest’s Royal Palm Tennis Club, where there’s a photo of her on the champions wall.

If there was an untold strategy to Fales’s pace, she says the answer is right in front of us all.

“Well, the secret is movement, which is what I tell everyone -- exercise, movement, sleep,” she said. “I keep moving, I take the stairs and I don’t take elevators. I don’t always park next to where I’m going.”

Fales is giving the young ones a run for their money.

She says she doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon and she may need a bigger trophy shelf!

Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.