ET Tour News has mostly focused on the men’s game. But today, we’ll take a brief detour to talk about the women’s game in a match so delightfully odd that you can hardly imagine it happening in the men’s game.

Kimiko Date, once ranked as high as number 4 in the world, was Japan’s number 1 player and a contemporary of Steffi Graf. Perhaps she is a poster child for why the flat style is both effective and a liability.

Possessing some of the most compact strokes in the women’s game, Date Krumm (she got married since retiring) had a style that was even unusual when she was an active pro. Date Krumm takes the ball off the rise, hits flats or slices. This style allowed her to compete with harder hitting bigger opponents, taking time away from her opponents, wrong-footing them.

It’s almost as if Jimmy Connors had retired at 30, came back on tour, and his style was still effective. It’s the strange.

Date Krumm is, you see, 38.

Now you could imagine that her game would not keep up with the power of today’s players. She received a wildcard into Wimbledon and had the misfortune of drawing a top seed in Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki who just won a grass court event at Eastbourne. Today’s players hit harder than Date Krumm. Still, Date Krumm doesn’t need much time to hit a ball. Her main problem is chasing down these shots. When she has time, she can hit flat sharp angles that force a tall player to stretch down. When she needs time, Date Krumm can slice deep of both wings. She is the anti-Nadal, a natural lefty that was brought up righty by a conservative culture, which allows her to go lefty if stretched on a backhand.

Date’s problem, when she playing was unforced errors. She could easily make dozens of unforced errors with her style. But when she was on, Date was a site to behold.

And so here’s the deal. What if Date had cleaned up her game? Got a bit mentally tougher. Learned to volley? Could her style match up? Could she beat girls that could be her daughter? Could a 1990s gal play 2009 women’s tennis?

Date just took the first set from Wozniacki, broke early in the second set, got broken back, then broke again. Is she ready to create that upset that shows today’s style to be too cookie cutter, too much big babe tennis, the kind of player (see Lindsay Davenport) that Date was confounding in her day.

Maybe Date won’t win. Maybe Wozniacki will come back. But if so, Date will have recreated one of tennis’s most singular vision of how tennis can be played, a kind of Fabrice Santoro meets Jimmy Connors meets Martina Navratilova. Her style may be the McEnroe of her day, a style so unusual that it defies mimicry. And perhaps, she’ll show that this old lady might still have a few tricks up her sleeveless sleeve.

ADDENDUM: Alas, Wozniacki was too much. Although Date-Krumm had broken early several times in the second set, she couldn’t hold her own serve. Date-Krumm called for a trainer in the third, but Wozniacki took the third set easily, 6-1.