IIn the fall of 2012, 18-year-old Danielle Collins enrolled at the University of Florida and joined a tennis team that had just won the NCAA championship. The team was composed of the best college players. Unfortunately, she is not one of them. During his year in Gainesville, Collins failed to crack the lineup.
Collins and I first spoke on the phone in May, when she was coming off back-to-back wins on the hard courts in Miami and the green clay in Charleston. She is currently ranked 11th in the world and plans to retire at the end of the 2024 season after eight years on tour and nearly $9 million in prize money. Astonishingly, half of her four WTA singles titles were won in quick succession towards the end of her career, as if she somehow believed in the life she wanted off the court – time, freedom, The opportunity to start a family – unleashed a liberating insight. She’s retiring, but first, she has to win. In an era where players are exiting their physical prime due to their bodies and years on the field, Collins is doing something unusual. She was leaving the court while everything was going well.
“People always ask me about my freshman year and say, ‘How is this possible? How come you’re not even in the starting lineup? I’m like, well, it’s not actually that crazy,'” Collins explained. “At the time, I wasn’t where I wanted to be. Being in that environment — they had just won a national championship — pushed me to be a better player and figure out what I needed to develop. It was a very humbling experience. experience.
Collins ended up transferring to the University of Virginia for his sophomore year. The coaching staff met her where she was and helped her design her game. Eventually, Collins found his stride. In 2014, she won the NCAA singles title — Virginia’s first — and her second two years later before entering the paid ranks. No one could have imagined at the time that this would be the start of a career that would see her reach Grand Slam singles finals and peak at No. 7 in the WTA rankings.
“This is probably one of the proudest things in my career,” she said. “From my beginnings as a college athlete to the trajectory of how I worked my way to the top and earned it. Really, truly earned it. I know what sacrifice, sweat and tears mean. Until I was in my twenties and now in my thirties It seemed unorthodox in the tennis world that I had most of my success in my early years.
Collins’ image in the NCAA victory — roaring, proud — now looks like the delta of the kind of player she would become over the next decade. Collins is not shy. In court she was bold, unapologetic and direct. Over the years, her reaction to setbacks, whether from opponents or the masses, has earned her a number of adjectives that, when used to describe women, have somehow transformed her image into a less than flattering portrait.
During her second-round match against Erika Andreeva at the Monterey Open earlier this month, a group of people in the crowd booed as Collins waited for Andreeva to serve. Collins eventually threw up her hands, visibly angry, and said, “What the hell is going on?” Lament those who make noise. She lost the match in three sets.
Collins will play fellow American Caroline Dolehead in the first round of the U.S. Open on Tuesday in the final Grand Slam of her career. With the end in sight, I asked her if there was a moment she could look back on and point to when she knew she had succeeded.
“The Miami Open quarterfinal against Venus Williams is my home match,” Collins said. “2018 was my breakout year, it was so surreal. I remember seeing Venus and Serena [Williams] Talking to them in the locker room, I think I had tears in my eyes. Then playing against Venus in a huge stadium with my friends and family was an amazing experience.
Collins’ father played in the league when she was growing up, and at age three she was running around the playground with him when he was on the field. Once she wanted to play on her own, her parents made every effort to get her lessons. In her first game, she didn’t know how to keep score. (“I lost that game,” she recalled.)
“Being able to play junior tennis with my parents is special,” Collins said. “I know how hard it is to come from a lower-middle-class family to afford this sport. My mom was a preschool teacher and my dad was a landscaper, and they saved up whatever money they earned so that they could teach kids on the weekends. I go to those games.
Collins looked at the Williams sisters, Jennifer Capriati and Anna Kournikova — other players from humble beginnings — to see what they were doing and what her tennis life would be like. “I thought it was so cool to see these women perform on the biggest stage in the world. I thought if those athletes could do it, maybe I could give it a try and pursue my dream of one day being them. That’s how I started .
In her final Wimbledon match in July, she reached the second week before losing to eventual champion Barbora Krejčíková in the round of 16, Matthew McCone Matthew McConaughey commented on Collins’ performance on Twitter, calling her “one of the greatest sports/life stories of 2024.” I asked her if she saw it. (She does.) Does she know him? (She didn’t.) Still, she was flattered. “It’s crazy to think that this guy, whose movies we’ve all seen, said something nice about my tennis. It really means a lot. “The Young and the Restless” came out a few months before Collins was born, even though “McCho Nissan” coincided with her breakout season at Virginia.
“I do think it’s very meaningful to be able to win some games this year to end my career,” she said. “One of my biggest career goals was to become an Olympian and I was able to achieve that. Usually it’s the story of young athletes getting to the top, but for us older veterans, people don’t think about it as much. I It took a little longer to get there, but going to the Olympics is the best memory I have on the court for the rest of my life.
Collins doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of another iteration of tennis later in life – not as a player, but as another career.
“The most important thing for me now is adjusting to life at home, having time to relax and build my family,” she said. “But I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to helping athletes who are eager to improve. Honestly, if I could work with tennis players at any level, I’d most enjoy being on the court with beginners. Surprisingly, I’m a very Patient person. You wouldn’t know it from playing professional tennis but I’m actually pretty good at coaching the beginner level. It’ll be interesting to see what I end up doing, but in the short term I’m just going to enjoy tennis for its own sake. as a profession.
