Ginny Graybiel

Before Margaret “Peggy” Machoian hit her first tennis ball, some 40 years ago around the age of 30 and embarked on a stellar tennis career, she and her husband, Ray, already were well enmeshed in a couple of successful careers.

Their first career: For 33 years, they raised pygmy goats at their 348-acre family farm in Annapolis, Md. Yes, 21 pygmy goats, raised for their milk, cared for like pets and sold. At the same time, they oversaw a chicken entrepreneurship that demanded even more time than the pygmy goats. 

They had four fried chicken restaurants in and around Annapolis, all called Machoian Poultry, and another handful of chicken restaurants in other places. Then they owned the curiously named Mad Margaret Restaurant in Key Largo, Fla., specializing in breakfasts (eggs, of course, especially omelets) and lunchtime grouper sandwiches.

But it was chicken that made the Machoian name, and Peggy doubts their recipe will ever be surpassed. Why was it so special? It was never frozen, always cooked with peanut oil, covered with special breading and seasoning, and very moist.

Besides raising daughter Lady Jane, Peggy had plenty to do at the business: bookkeeping, tending the farm, ordering hay, ordering grain, keeping the creatures healthy and happy, ordering supplies, making sure the restaurants had enough change for Sundays. The list was endless. On the side, she and Ray sponsored a women’s softball team associated with a bar they also owned. Called the Machoian Turkeys, the team was talented enough to play in the nationals in Texas one year.

But all good things – from pygmy goats to mud-covered softball uniforms – must come to an end.

“We had 10 restaurants at one point,” Peggy said. “We had them all over the place. We started selling them off as we got older.” And as her qualms grew about being an older person in a young person’s softball game, her husband bought her a membership in a club with tennis courts. The transition from field to court wasn’t simple – for wife or husband.

“You gotta understand,” Peggy, now 71, said. “I am a girl living on a good old farm, playing softball, where one can sit and cuss and do whatever you want. And then we go to tennis where you’re supposed to wear nice little skirts. Don’t cuss, don’t spit. Be quiet. Your husband can’t come and scream and holler at you.  And the first time I play, he says, ‘What do you mean? I can’t talk while you are playing?’ So this is my introduction into tennis.”

But she was quickly sold on tennis when one of her first instructors told her, “Listen to the cadence of the ball.” Since then, she said, the pure pop, pop, pop of the ball has been music to her ears. 

On a more inauspicious note, she appeared in a volleyball outfit, with little shorts, knee socks and a jersey with No. 1 on it for another early lesson. Walking to the court, she asked the pro, “OK, how long will it be before I can get a ranking?” His answer: “You’re nothing but a housewife. Where do you think you’re gonna go with this?” Peggy tucked away that little nugget, something to reflect on as she played in highly competitive tournaments and obtained high rankings.

To answer the question, Peggy has been ranked as high as No. 4 nationally in 45 singles and No. 1 in the Mid-Atlantic 35, 40 and 45 singles. After a singles hiatus of eight years, she came in fifth at the La Jolla Tennis Championships last year, one of senior women’s toughest tournaments. She and her doubles partner of more than 15 years, Joan Oelschlager, are No. 3 nationally in 70s doubles this year.

Joan, co-President of the National Women’s Tennis Organization, greatly influenced Peggy’s game. Their first grass court tournament, Joan told her, “You can’t sit at the baseline. You don’t play grass from the baseline.” Peggy’s answer: “Well, maybe I do.” But she reluctantly began coming to the net. “I now come to the net wonderfully and I love the volley,” she said.

She doesn’t prefer one surface over another. “The hard court you’re rewarded for smacking the hell out of the ball. On clay, you have to be smarter and work the point. On grass, who the hell knows what’s going to happen?” 

In Maryland, Peggy coached high school tennis as well as taught at two clubs. After Ray died in 2014, she moved to their condo in Fort Lauderdale, telling herself she’d enjoy playing tennis but wouldn’t teach again.

She looked up her old friends, Michael and Carol Fagan, who lived in Key Largo, and unexpectedly learned that Carol, like Ray, had died of cancer. She wound up talking with Michael at his real estate office for four hours, then launched into three years of dating culminating in marriage. “I wasn’t looking to get married, let me tell you, after some 40 years,” she said.

So now, Peggy lives in Key Largo and drives two or more hours to Fort Lauderdale every week to play tennis. Despite her protestations to the contrary, she’s filling in for a Key Largo pro away for the summer. She’s enjoying it. “After teaching some 40 years, you don’t have to do the same thing every week,” she said. “I mean, I’d get bored. But I’m not bored so I know they’re not bored.”

She has a mature perspective. Whatever the score, she’s thriving on the camaraderie among the senior women who turn out again and again, even if they have to take a break for a knee replacement or a family crisis. She knows anyone can win, recalling the woman who wore “two knee braces that squeaked the whole time” dispatching her years ago. “You don’t judge a book by its cover in this little sport,” she said. 

Mentally, it’s easier playing in the upper age divisions, she said. “You quit putting pressure on yourself. You want to win. You hate losing. But you’re out there having a good time.”