In today’s women’s tennis we have a wide age range of players making their mark, from young guns shaking up the draws, to women in their thirties dominating tournaments, but 43-year-old Kimiko Date Krumm is something special and this Thursday the Japanese once again showed that age is just a number even in sports and upset defending champion of the $710,000 Premier-level AEGON Classic Daniela Hantuchova 6-4 6-0 to reach the quarterfinals, her first final eight of such a big event since 1996.
Date Krumm, who reached the semifinals of Wimbledon back in 1996, faced a match point in her previous match against twelfth seed Monica Puig and against the seventh-seeded Hantuchova, after capturing the tight tenth game at 5-4 in which she faced a break point, the 78th-ranked Japanese raced through the second set on the grass of Birmingham.
The next opponent of Date Krumm will be Australian seed No.16 Casey Dellacqua, who upset her second-seeded compatriot Samantha Stosur 2-6 6-2 6-2. Tournament’s top seed Ana Ivanovic cruised past Lauren Davis 6-1 6-1 and will next play sixth seed Klara Koukalova. The other two quarterfinal pairs feature: seed No.3 Sloane Stephens vs. seed No.9 Zhang Shuai and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova vs. seed No.4 Kirsten Flipkens. (photo: JJ Tennis)
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