Today Kimiko Date Krumm (picture ©Spicks & Specks) celebrates her 40th birthday and she celebrated it also in the court in the Tokyo tournament defeating Daniela Hantuchova after her yesterday win versus Maria Sharapova.

Kimiko Date Krumm story is pretty peculiar because she’s left-handed but she plays as right-handed but particularly because she retired from competitions in 1996 and she came back in 2008, after 12 years.

In her first career Kimiko Date Krumm won 7 WTA titles and reached the semifinals in three Grand Slam tournaments while at the U.S. Open she “only” reached quarter-finals. In 1995 she reached the fourth place in the WTA ranking, her best result.

After her come back to the competitions in 2009 Kimiko Date Krumm won the WTA Seoul tournament becoming the oldest player to win a WTA tournament after Billie Jean King. In the Grand Slam tournament so far she won just one match, an upset at Roland Garros where she defeated ex number 1 Dinara Safina despite an injury. Now she’s the oldest player to rank inside Top 50 in the WTA ranking.

Many people think that Kimiko Date Krumm’s results are due to a low level in today’s women tennis: it’s true that today when Serena Williams plays seriously in a tournament generally she wins it, on the other hand there are many girls very strong under an athletical point of view and to play with the best at 40 years old you need to have a really excellent physical shape. Besides it’s true that twenty years ago there were some players who are already remembered among the best of all time but how many of the players who were behind them are remembered as really strong?

Anyway Kimiko Date Krumm is to be admired for how she’s facing the second part of her career: in sports there were many cases of playere who came back to the activity just to do poor results while the Japanese is still competitive offering us a good show and at this point we hope that she has the will and the energies to go on at high level as long as possible!