TENNIS:AT NINE years older and seven inches smaller, Kimiko Date-Krumm was giving away a lot to Venus Williams yesterday. When an opponent decides to make a comeback in 2008 having started their career in 1989 and retired in 1997, the American would have had to assume Date-Krumm would be somewhat unconventional.

At 40 years old, the Japanese player’s career began when the current world number one, 20-year-old Caroline Wozniacki, wasn’t even born.

That the combined ages of yesterday’s pair was 71 didn’t deter either player from comfortably gifting Centre Court with the best match played so far, Date-Krumm, spry and waspish, challenging Williams to show her best game or take the next flight home.

Williams came into Wimbledon on the back of a fractured season due to a hip injury and at 31, would, in women’s tennis terms, be entering the twilight of her career.

In the match day programme the pairing was referred to as the “Zimmer Frame Special,” something Date-Krumm and Williams, who won 6-7, 6-3, 8-6, debunked over two hours and 39 minutes.

Yesterday offered us a choice. Stoke the embers under accusations of a shallow women’s field or celebrate two athletes. Williams and Date-Krumm took the age profiles to extremes but the issue of age and a lack of thrust from youth is used to bash the women’s game.

How could Williams remain dominant and Date-Krumm even appear in the singles draw at 40 years old?

But indications yesterday were seeded players were not as young as in the past. There was one teenager playing, 19-year-old Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, and of the other seeds inside the top 20, four of them – Petra Kvitova (21), Victoria Azerenka (21), Agnieszka Radwanska (22) and Yanina Wickmayer (21) – could be considered young players.

The Williams sisters (29 and 31) didn’t play enough for a high seeding this season. What started out some years ago as a sensible WTA reform to hold back young players for fear of burnout appears to have come back to bite them with accusations there is little depth and no real powerhouses coming through to challenge the old guard.

But it is easy to forget the storied history of Jennifer Capriati, Tracy Austin, Martina Hingis. In 2002 the 22-year-old Hingis decided to opt out of tennis and into retirement. She returned in 2006 and retired for good in 2007.

Justine Henin first retired in 2002 at 26 and stopped for good in January due to a bad elbow injury. Kim Clijsters announced her retirement in 2007 at 24. In 2009 she returned to the WTA tour.

“If you go back and look at Hingis, Justine Henin, you look at Kim Clijsters and other girls. Why is it they had to quit at 25? Tennis has burned you out, tennis will kill you. Venus is 29, she is ready to play. She didn’t burn out at an early age,” said Richard Williams two years ago. The father of two of the best players ever is seen as eccentric but perhaps women’s tennis doesn’t lack depth but has embraced choice. Forty-year-old players in the main draw? Richard Williams would approve.