World number 83 Kimiko Date-Krumm saw age catch up with her Tuesday as the 42-year-old Japanese slid out at the French Open, losing her opening round match to Australian ninth seed Samantha Stosur.
The veteran strove as best she could but was no match for former US Open champion Stosur, who romped to a 6-0, 6-2 victory in just 1hr 04min.
It was only in the fourth game of the second set that Date-Krumm finally got on the scoresheet as she triumphantly held serve and broke out into a relieved grin.
But Stosur, losing finalist three years ago, was not going to allow a possible upset to develop. And she promptly closed the door against a rival who at 42 years and 240 days became the third oldest player to compete in women’s singles in the tournament – Martina Navratilova holding the record at 47 and 232 days from her 2004 showing.
Fully 57 players in this year’s women’s singles draw were not even born when Date-Krumm made her Roland Garros debut just a year shy of a quarter of a century ago, in 1989.
Six years after that, she went down in the semi-finals to Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and that remains the Kyoto-born player’s best showing in 12 attempts on the slow red clay in the French capital.
But her 45th main draw Grand Slam showing came to a swift end against Stosur, who had lost to the Japanese in Osaka in 2010 as the Aussie became on that occasion the first top ten player to lose to a rival past her 40th birthday.
Possibly with that loss in mind, Stosur set off like a train, rattling off the opening set in just 21min as her opponent fired a wayward forehand beyond the baseline.
A comparatively marathon game heralded the start of the second set as Stosur took fully six minutes to hold serve.
Date-Krumm then unsuccessfully disputed a line call as she let slip the opening point of the next game and looked thoroughly dispirited as a crunching Stosur forehand return found the line to break the Japanese to love.
Date-Krumm, who won the most recent of her eight singles crowns in Seoul in 2009 – a WTA Tour record 12 years on from her previous success to become the second oldest ever tournament winner after Billie Jean King – eked out a break chance in the following game.
But Stosur again worked her all around the court before leaving her marooned as another forehand found its dusty mark against the former world number four.
A flicker of resistance then emerged as Date-Krumm, a semi-finalist once each at Roland Garros, the Australian Open and Wimbledon in the mid-1990s, held for 1-3 and then hit a double-handed crosscourt winner to hold for 2-4, delighting Japanese fans huddled in raincoats in chilly conditions on Court 1.
There was a further glint of feistiness from Date-Krumm as she challenged the umpire’s finding that she had double hit a forehand return, sliding in so doing to the brink of defeat at 2-5 down and she finally drove long to concede the contest.
Stosur now faces either Lauren Davis of the United States or Kristina Mladenovic of France.
Time catches up with Japanese veteran Date-Krumm
