Meet the Amazing 44-Year-Old Women's Tennis Player Who's Still Kicking Ass

Serena Williams respects her. Venus Williams thinks she's a role model. Steffi Graf simply thinks she's crazy.

Meet 44-year-old Japanese tennis player Kimiko Date-Krumm. Nineteen years ago, she was on Centre Court at Wimbledon, playing against Graf in the semifinals.

Two weeks ago, Date-Krumm was on an outside court at the WTA's Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C., playing a first-round qualification match against someone half her age in front of a crowd of less than 100 people.

That's right, Date-Krumm is still playing professional tennis. Well, "still" might not be the right term. Date-Krumm turned pro when she was 18, retired when she was 26, and returned to the WTA tour when she was 37.

Sitting with her after she won that Charleston qualification match 6-1, 6-1 over 23-year-old American Julia Boserup, I asked if she ever planned on playing into her mid-40s, even when she came back to the sport seven years ago.

"No, God no, of course not," Date-Krumm said with a laugh. "But still I have an opportunity to play at the WTA level, and I like sports, I like tennis, I like competition, so even if I cannot win, I still love to play."

Date-Krumm's game is a relic of a bygone era—albeit, an era that she was an integral part of. Listed as 5'4", Date-Krumm doesn't have the power to play today's baseline-oriented, spin-heavy style. Instead, she redirects pace with precision, taking the ball early and hitting it flat. She comes to the net often and seeks to end points quickly, both unwilling and unable to engage in slugfests.

Two-thirds of the current WTA top 100 were born after Date-Krumm played her first WTA tournament; two players in the top 100 weren't even born when she retired for the first time. She is at least a decade older than everyone else in the top 200, and one of only two players in the top 1,000 born in the 1970s—Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand, No. 236, is the other one, and she was born in 1977, seven years after Date-Krumm.

Given that modern tennis is a brutal, physically taxing, and mentally draining sport that pushes the best 20-something athletes in the world to their limits, it's no exaggeration to say that what Date-Krumm is doing—just by stepping onto the court, let alone winning matches—is unprecedented.

The Japanese star claims the key to her longevity is eating healthy, drinking lots of water, and sleeping a lot. "It's a simple life," she said.

But really, it's much more than that. Date-Krumm's story is about figuring out how to live life on her own terms, putting her ego aside, and chasing the one thing that so many of us forget about as the years go by—joy.

It was curiosity and an inability to sit still that led a six-year-old Date-Krumm to begin playing tennis. The youngest child of active parents, she picked up the sport at a tennis club where her parents played for fun. After making it to the semifinals of a lower-level pro tournament in Japan at 17, she decided to turn pro and began what is now known as her "first career."

That career was remarkable on its own: Date-Krumm made the semifinals of the French Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open; was in the top 10 for three years, peaking at No. 4; won seven WTA titles in 13 finals; and notched victories over such noted Grand Slam champions and/or former No. 1's as Graf, Gabriela Sabatini, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Jana Novotna, Conchita Martinez, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce, and Monica Seles. She was by far the most successful Japanese female tennis player in history, and at the time was one of the country's most popular athletes.

But there was a big problem in her first career—Date-Krumm didn't enjoy it. At all.

She was young and single, she didn't speak English (though at one time it was reported that the WTA was forcing her to learn the language), and there were no mobile phones or computers to easily connect her to her loved ones back home. She was lonely. Plus, there weren't many international Japanese athletes, even outside of tennis, so the Japanese media was completely focussed on her. The pressure became too much to bear.

Date-Krumm knew that to get beyond the No. 4 ranking in the world and into a major final to challenge Steffi or Monica or Gabby for a Grand Slam, she needed to work even harder. But given the circumstances, doing so felt impossible.

There was another problem, too, one that no amount of motivation or extra training could solve—Date-Krumm felt that everyone received a finite amount of luck, and she was wasting all of hers on a tennis career.

"I already used the luck for my life on the tennis. I had to save more of the luck for the other things," she said. "If I get a Grand Slam title, maybe I cannot find a good husband."

And so, less than six months after she faced Graf in the Wimbledon semifinals, and a mere three months after one of the biggest titles of her career—a win in San Diego that saw her defeat Sabatini, Martinez, and Sanchez Vicario in succession—Date-Krumm abruptly hung up her tennis racket and began a brand-new life away from the court. At the time, it seemed crazy to outsiders that she would throw away such a promising career and the subsequent prize money and fame while she was in her prime. But for Date-Krumm, it felt like the only possible decision.

Finally, at 26, her life was no longer just about tennis.

"I spent time with family, I spent time with friends, I went to cooking school, I did many things," she said. "Just enjoy my life."

In 2001, five years after retirement, Date-Krumm found happiness—or luck, as she might put it—in her personal life when she married German racecar driver Michael Krumm. She was completely content with her life and kept busy doing some work for Japanese television, traveling with her husband, and staying active. She never felt like she missed tennis until Krumm put the bug in her ear, pointing out that she was still young enough and fit enough to play on the tour.

She was adamant that she wasn't coming back, though—"I said, 'No, no, no, my career is finished.'"

Even in retirement, however, Date-Krumm remained the face of Japanese tennis—and with her ongoing popularity came opportunities to play in exhibition matches. She was slated to play in one in 2002, and decided to enter in a WTA doubles event at the Japan Open in Tokyo to prepare. However, that particular "comeback" lasted only one set, as she tore her Achilles tendon in her left leg and was forced to retire from the Japan Open, as well as withdraw from the exhibition match.

A few years later, after Date-Krumm successfully ran the London Marathon in 3:30, an even bigger opportunity presented itself—she was invited to be a part of an exhibition against Graf and Martina Navratilova in Japan. Determined to actually make it all the way through this time, she started full-time training six months before the event was scheduled to take place. After playing tennis once a year—at most—during the past decade, she had to start from scratch, not only preparing her body physically to play the game again, but training her eyes to follow the ball.

The more she practiced and played the more she enjoyed herself, and eventually Date-Krumm decided that if she did well at the exhibition match, then she would aim to play in Japan's national championships in November. She beat Graf and Navratilova. Next thing she knew, she was enrolling in ITF tournaments to pass the time until the championship tournament.

Then 37 years old—and 11 years removed from the top of the rankings, almost two lifetimes in professional tennis terms—Date-Krumm showed that she hadn't missed a beat. In her first ITF tournament back, a $50,000 in Gitu, Japan, she qualified and made it all the way to the final, defeating two top 200 players and one top 100 player along the way. She then won three smaller ITF tournaments in a row in Japan.

Finally, at the country's national championship in November, she won the title in both singles and doubles. By the end of 2008, her world ranking was back into the top 200. At that point she was on a roll, and it seemed silly to stop.

"My husband said, 'Already you can enter into Australian Open quallies, you must go,'" she said.

"I thought—why not?"

And so, just like that, a second career began in earnest.

While Date-Krumm's return hasn't included any top fives or appearances in the second week of a Grand Slam, it hasn't been devoid of highlights—since returning to the tour, Date-Krumm has become the second-oldest woman behind Billie-Jean King to win a WTA singles title; notched wins in singles over former No. 1's and/or major champions Dinara Safina, Maria Sharapova, Li Na, and Samantha Stosur; climbed as high as No. 46 in the rankings; and won five WTA doubles titles and nine ITF singles titles.

At this point, Date-Krumm's playing career has spanned many generations—she has faced opponents born in both 1959 and 1997. She has faced both Graf and Serena in their primes—for the record, she thinks Serena is the best, but Graf could still be top-five if she came back today—and has had a front-row seat to the changes in women's tennis over the decades.

"Tennis is completely different from the 90s," Date-Krumm said. "Everybody hits harder, it's more physical and more powerful. Before, we had more time during the rally. But now we don't have a lot. When I go to ITF tournaments, I have a little bit of time, but in WTA tournaments, every ball I need to concentrate."

Even with a laser-like focus, nothing physical comes easy for Date-Krumm. Not anymore. She has to be very particular about her training—if she does too much, her body can't recover. If she does too little, she can't keep up with opponents young enough to be her children. She sticks to resistance bands instead of weights and core training, and is always trying to find a balance.

Date-Krumm knows and accepts that age and decline are inevitable, but she is determined to go down fighting. If you ask her peers on the WTA Tour, whatever she's doing right now is working. In fact, players don't simply marvel at her years on court or her friendly personality—they marvel at her youthful looks, too.

"I'm like, What are you putting on your face you look so young like that?" former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic, 30, said. "She gave me some cream, but I was like, 'Yeah right, that's not it, it's your genes. Your DNA has nothing to do with those creams.'"

"Have you seen her? She looks younger than I do," 27-year-old world No. 11 Andrea Petkovic said. "She's absolutely amazing. This is such a tough sport, and it's so lonely on tour sometimes and that she's able to pull through this and still play great tennis at that age to me it's really amazing."

As Date-Krumm's fanbase continues to grow inside and outside of the WTA, she is faced with yet another harsh reality: After a year filled with injuries, her singles ranking has dropped back down to No. 152 in the world. The match she won in Charleston qualification was her first win since January, and she still hasn't won back-to-back matches in 2015. She fell in the second round of Charleston qualifiers, 6-0, 6-1.

At the age of 44, with all of her contemporaries over a decade removed from their playing days, she once again has been relegated to the minor leagues of the sport, usually in front of crowds that can be measured in tens, not thousands. Few athletes who have achieved her level of success would be willing to put themselves through that, but Date-Krumm has no ego that needs to be put aside. She just keeps going, relishing this nothing-to-lose part of her career and appreciating things that she couldn't the first time around.

"Another challenge is coming. But I have still motivation, so I will try one more time to go back to top 100 again, and then still I want to play a little bit more. I like to play.

"Tennis is a very short life," she said with a smile. "Well, except for me."