Australian Open 2013 - Kimiko roars into Round Two

Kimiko celebrates her victory in Melbourne

Australian Open 2013 Day 2 - Kimiko roars into Round Two

My player of the day on day two at Melbourne Park can only go to the legendary Kimiko Date-Krumm who today became the oldest player ever to win a match at the Australian Open.

Aged 42 years and 109 days the former World No.4 swept past 12th seed Nadia Petrova 6-2, 6-0 in just 64 minutes.

Date-Krumm was a semi-finalist at Melbourne in 1994, losing 6-3, 6-3 to World No.1 Steffi Graf, and last won a match at the year's first major seventeen years ago.

Having initially retired from the game, aged just 26, after the 1996 WTA Championships she returned to the game in 2008 for what has been an inspiring comeback.

This is now her 13th consecutive Grand Slam main draw appearance into the comeback, and one which she only secured late last year with an ITF title in Dubai, and is her third victory after first round wins at the 2010 French Open and Wimbledon in 2011.

She has been handed some difficult draws in the majors - including Svetlana Kuznetsova, Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki - but showed at Wimbledon two years ago that she can still compete with the best when she played possibly the match of the tournament in going down to five-time champion Venus Williams in a second round thriller 7-6(6), 3-6, 6-8.

Going into today's match with Petrova the Japanese veteran had a win over the Russian under her belt in Sydney three years ago but also a tight loss in Miami a few months later.

Petrova finished 2012 in excellent form but was totally outplayed by the World No.100 on court 6 as Date-Krumm swept to a comfortable victory allowing the big serving Russian just one hold of serve in the match.

Total commitment on the backhand

Coming into the tournament Date-Krumm had qualified in Shenzhen and also came through qualifying in Sydney where she won a round and took a respectable seven games from eventual champion Radwanska.

As well as 100 ranking points Date-Krumm's prize today is a second round encounter with former World No.11 Shahar Peer from Israel.  The pair of shared two previous meetings but it was the Japanese player who edged their last encounter 3-6, 7-6(5), 7-5 at Osaka in 2010.

There will be plenty of attention on the 42 year-old on Thursday to see if she can win through to her first Grand Slam third round since she was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon in 1996.  I would not count against her.

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