We take a brief detour from covering the men’s game to bring you commentary on a women’s game.
Imagine, if you will, that you could somehow transport Jimmy Connors from the past to the present, a man who was both a combination of old school (flat groundstrokes) and new (two-handed backhand) and you had him on tour playing, oh, I don’t know, someone modern. Verdasco, perhaps? And imagine that Connors shot-making was so out of the ordinary, so befuddling, that modern players didn’t know what to do with it. And imagine that you didn’t take Connors from his prime, but the Connors from 1991, a 39 year old Connors. And imagine he hadn’t continued to play continuous tennis up to 39, but had actually retired.
Well, that’s the scenario that occurred in the first round which pittegot d Kimiko Date-Krumm, 39 years old, retired back in 1996 and had been content not to play tennis. She got married in 2001 to Michael Krumm, a German race car driver, and began running marathons to keep herself busy. As the years passed, Krumm wanted to see his wife play pro tennis, an idea that was frankly insane.
It’s one thing for Kim Clijsters or Justine Henin to retire and come back. Both players were in the middle of their careers and came back at respectable ages. Neither was off the tour for more than about 2 years. Date-Krumm had not seriously hit for around a decade. To decide to pick up a racquet and start training lead her down one of those improbable journeys. Initially, she played an exhibition with her old rival Steffi Graf then played some tournaments in Japan before playing some small tournaments and even getting a wildcard into Wimbledon.
Of all the seeded players to play, Date Krumm was perhaps lucky that she got Dinara Safina whose mental confidence has long since abandoned her. Although she was a finalist at the French last year, she had not had any real serious results. Even so, she was still seeded ninth, and her size, 6’1″, towers over her diminuitive opponent at 5’4″.
Date Krumm has long had to find ways to beat bigger women. By the time she was playing her best tennis, throughout the early 90s, the days of dainty figured women like Chris Evert were long past, and bigger women, like Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, and Mary Pierce were beginning to fill the landscape of women. Mary Carillo termed the phenomenon “big babe tennis”. These were big women who hit big. Date Krumm was often a David among female Goliaths.
She built a style of play much like Connors, predicated on hitting the ball off the rise with a minimal backswing. No loop. No windshield wiper follow-through. Today’s modern woman player may hit flatter than, say, the men, but they still hit with topspin. Not so with Date Krumm, whose flat ball whizzes through the air. This flat style and her short height lead to a perennial problem: unforced errors. Date Krumm makes so many unforced errors that she would make Roger Federer on a bad day blush.
Anyone who looked at the score 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 would have said “there goes Safina, breaking down mentally again”. And that is right. Safina was fighting more than an opponent that’s old enough to be her mother. She was, of course, fighting her own demons. Safina hit 17 double faults. Ok, that sounds bad, but let’s make it a bit more even.
Kimiko Date-Krumm hit 63 unforced errors! 63! This was compared to a somewhat respectable 38 unforced errors on Safina’s part. Date-Krumm’s aggressiveness lead to 37 winners to Safina’s 12.
OK, let’s make this even more interesting. Date-Krumm had her calf taped up and it was bothering her throughout the third set. She was down 4-1, double break, with Safina ready to serve to go up 5-1. In this game, she felt a muscle pull and began to hobble her movement. She managed to somehow win this game through, yes, a double fault by Safina, but also two consecutive down the line return winners, and get to 4-2. She asked for a trainer who was, at best, only able to massage her calf.
You would imagine that Safina would only need to move Date-Krumm around, or drop shot her, or get her going side to side. But because Date-Krumm would often take aggressive swipes to one side or the other, Safina was lobbing shots up the middle to recover. This is one case where a tall woman having to hit low shots struggled.
Somehow, Date-Krumm managed to hold to 4-3, then break again to 4-all. She held again to 5-4. She was leading in that game and it seemed that Safina would lose 6-4, but due to errors from Date-Krumm, Safina held serve to 5-all. Date-Krumm then got down 0-30 on her own serve and it seemed Safina might break and be serving for the match herself. But Date-Krumm dug out of that game and was up 6-5.
Safina then opened the game with her last double fault, going down 0-15. In the second point, Date-Krumm hit two very deep shots near the baseline eliciting an error from Safina. 0-30. In the third point, Safina hit a crazy lob forehand that sailed long, 0-40. And finally, Date-Krumm hit a return and Safina hit another shot just long and the match was over, 7-5.
In the end, one wondered what Date-Krumm had to prove. She could have retired. Things looked dire. And yet, she said she doesn’t like to retire, and she just fought on. Hobbled by an inability to full-out move, she resorted to drop shots, forays to the net and drop volleys. It was as improbable a victory as you’d ever hope to see. And even if Safina is a basket case, just consider how a woman who didn’t play tennis for a dozen years could beat players half her age. And it’s not just Safina that she’s beaten. Date-Krumm has beaten Hanchutova, Kirilenko, and Medina Garrigues.
Date-Krumm may not make it much further in this tournament. But she can say that an old lady playing old school tennis can still beat today’s players, even if some of those players don’t always show the resolve that she’s shown.