In between sets at the Mountain Park Tennis Center, Charlie Myers, 75, holds court, so to speak, regaling a dozen or so elderly men with a story or joke, sometimes a bawdy one.

On a recent occasion, after Myers delivered a punch line, Jim Hurd, 79, piped up that it would have been funny if he hadn't told that one two weeks ago.

And so goes the sport among these senior citizens, who gather here each Friday morning for a little exercise and a lot of poking fun at each other, especially the aging process. If there's competition, it revolves around who can top the other with the best trash talk.

As if to make the point that toilet humor never gets old, the gang, whose members range in age from 65 to 92, call themselves, according to their roster, "Ye Olde Windbreakers."

It's about friendship and fellowship, explained Melton "Mel" McNeill, 82, from the court last week, all clad in white and brimming with a joke, like most of the others.

Twenty men showed up, buzzing with enthusiasm over a reporter on site, many of them eager for their turn to talk about their profession and the camaraderie of the gang.

"Nobody gets mad if you make a bad call," McNeill says. "You just hand them your glasses and say, 'try again.' "

Sometimes, frankly, they can't remember the score, says Ned Boring, 92. "We don't argue about it," he says. "Life's too short."

Tip Goza, 81, started the group 20 years ago. A retired coach, he spent 34 years coaching baseball and football at Avondale High School, then baseball, soccer and tennis at what's now Georgia Perimeter College. Today, he wears an orthopaedic back support belt but apparently still inspires fear.

"You get him on a tennis court, he'll whip your [butt]," says Hollis Pickett, 80, a former sales manager for industrial supplies.

Goza says he got the idea for starting a local group when he noticed about 30 seniors meeting in Decatur. In fact, these tennis groups are not uncommon around town, he says. For their part, the group started out with about six at Henderson Park in Tucker.

Then they moved to a now-defunct racket club, until finding a more convenient and cheaper spot in Mountain Park. Along the way, the group split and grew.

Part of the fun are what you might call the extras.

For the first few years, Goza made scuppernong wine. Each Christmas, they'd go to Shoney's and before heading in to eat, they'd gather around his pickup truck and drink by the Dumpster. "We called it the Dumpster party," he says.

Bob Davis, 82, a former sales manager for Pfizer, used to hand out Viagra pens.

Despite all the ribbing, sometimes the guys forget their age. Well, momentarily anyway.

Fred Burklin, 79, who serves as president and treasurer, collecting the money to reserve the courts, went "diving for the ball" about five years ago, "which you should not do at this age," the retired minister said.

Here, the draw is even more than camaraderie —- it's acceptance, no matter one's degree of skill or faculties. It's why, for example, they look after the one who has dementia, who may forget his coat or racket.

And they've seen each other through losing a few spouses.

When Hurd lost his first wife 10 years ago, the guys had a Honeybaked Ham delivered to his home, and most of them came to the funeral. He was back on the courts in just a couple of weeks.

"I guess you kind of need a support group under those conditions, and they've always been that way, I think, as a group of men," Hurd said.

He has since remarried. For Fred Surmann, 74, who lost his wife last year, three hours on the court meant time away from thinking about his wife of 48 years. "It helps not to brood," he says.

The players count many veterans among them, including Davis, a WWII combat paratrooper who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

These days, their efforts may be a bit more mundane, but no less heroic.

"The conversation's eventually gonna get to your hurt leg or your last trip to the doctor or whatever you're taking for cholesterol," says Bill Chapman, 70, a former assistant secretary of state and state director for former Sen. Max Cleland.

"We don't dwell on it."