Miami Gardens, Florida— Danielle Collins wants to set one thing straight. She was serious about giving up tennis.
real.
The fiery 30-year-old Floridian – who has reached the semifinals of the Miami Open, her closest home match on the tennis tour – has heard all the doubters.
Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion, has known and played against Collins since he was a kid. After a heartbreaking three-set loss to Iga Swiatek in Australia in January, Collins blurted out for the first time that she was done, which she blamed on the frustration of losing. . Coach Jared Jacobs, who has been in Collins’ box at the past two majors, still isn’t entirely convinced she’ll do it.
“We’ll see,” he said.
Other friends on the tour shrugged and asked, “Why? ” — Partly because they knew she could be much better than they were, health permitting.
None of this matters. Not the terror she inflicted on world number one Swiatek in Melbourne. Not her semi-finals at an event just below Grand Slam level, nor the money she’s leaving behind in possible future prize money and sponsorships. That’s all great, but she’s had enough, or at least she will by the end of the season.
Collins said she will retire from tennis at the end of the year (Shi Tang/Getty Images)
“I’ve been doing this for a while,” she said, even though, relatively speaking, she hasn’t. Her career lasted only two seasons longer than Coco Gauff, who was 10 years younger than her.
any. She does feel like a while has passed and she has other goals, other things she wants to accomplish, other things she wants to spend her time with besides traveling the world, living in hotel rooms, and being obsessed with a vague trajectory The way. Yellow Ball and whether her rheumatoid arthritis will allow her to play the next day. She wanted to start a family sooner rather than later.
“I love what I do, the opportunities and the doors it opens, but it’s not easy and I’m a homebody,” said Collins, a 2022 Australian Open finalist. “I’m a simple person. I like to water my plants, walk my dog, go get a cup of coffee in the morning and make sure my bed is made. I buy special laundry detergent, I have my little beauty supplies in the cupboard, oh my god Ah, if I had to stay at home all the time every day, I would never get tired of it. I love reading my books. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.”
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Now might be a good time to point out that for any of Collins’ upcoming opponents, it would be a bad idea to mistake that for a lack of competitiveness in this moment or for the rest of the season. She still breaks the ball with abandon, especially on her backhand, and her pedal-to-the-metal style can overwhelm opponents, as world No. 23 Caroline Garcia did in Wednesday’s quarterfinals That way. Just days after Garcia defeated Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff, Collins defeated her in two clean sets (6-3, 6-2).
During a match in Austin, Texas, last month, Katie Volynets was on serve, winning a set and then getting a break. The arthritis in her back was so bad that she had to make sure the ball was thrown in front of her because she couldn’t arch her back on the serve.
in spite of. She fought back to win the second set tiebreaker and the third set 6-0, and in what seemed like a waning moment, she decided that since she was already out in the gray cold, she might as well shake off the adrenaline pain and win.
“When a strong player is angry, there’s nothing you can do,” Austin tournament director Crystal Van Rensburg said of Collins that day.
Collins (left) reaches the quarterfinals of the Miami Open (Robert Prange/Getty Images)
Collins needed 89 minutes to beat Romania’s Sorana Cirstea in the round of 16 on Monday at the cozy Butch Buchholz Family Court at Hard Rock Stadium. ) defeated her 6-3, 6-2. A rowdy group of Romanian fans sat on the sidelines, cheering for Costia and jeering at Collins throughout the late afternoon.
When Collins clinched the final point of a hard-fought but lopsided victory, she put her finger to her lips to shut them up and walked to the net to shake hands. She grabbed her bag and walked out of the stadium alone for the rest of the night. Her box is empty. No parents. There is no coach. She is pursuing a solo career. Simply put, while this may be her last tournament in her hometown, and her farewell season is certainly better at this point than other players trying to grab a bit of glory in their final tournament (Rafael Nadal, Anna Dee Murray) is much better.
That’s the dynamic the Collins family has always had. Tennis, she insists, is what she does, not who she is, and her parents would be proud of her if she worked behind a cash register.
Her mother was a preschool teacher and her father ran a small landscaping business. Her father, who made a living changing laws until he retired last year at age 84, would often get up before school to play ball with her and let his friends fight her in local courthouses in St. Petersburg, Florida.
But when she was a teenager, her family couldn’t afford the best coaches or allow her to travel around the country, let alone abroad. Playing tennis meant getting an education, and she did just that, graduating from the University of Virginia as a two-time NCAA champion.
When she told her parents she had the opportunity to turn professional, they suggested pursuing a graduate degree instead. She won more than $7 million in prize money, though she never felt like she was playing for anyone but herself.
How did they react to her planned retirement? Great, they want grandchildren.
“They might say, ‘This is the damn time,'” she said.
If she hadn’t been a tennis player, this might have happened earlier for both desire and health reasons. For years, doctors largely ignored her complaints of heavy periods and painful periods, but she finally found one who listened and correctly diagnosed endometriosis, a disease like A disease in which endometrial tissue grows outside the uterus.
After undergoing surgery to remove the tissue, her doctor told her that pregnancy might also help suppress symptoms — but it didn’t really help her career, but she continued to play. After October this will no longer be an issue.
She still plans to travel and has already started. After being eliminated from the Australian Open, she went hiking with her boyfriend in Tasmania’s giant swamp eucalyptus forest. They’re not as big as redwoods, but not far off. She plans to travel to South Africa in December.
Will she miss tennis?
perhaps? She’s the kind of pro who can enjoy the feel of the ball against weekend warriors, but she’s jealous of the baseball, basketball and football players who travel on private and charter flights, have home games and long offseasons. She hopes there will be home games. She didn’t, even though there was a tennis court at home and more down the street.
“If tennis was in a different format, it would be a completely different story and I might reconsider it,” she said of her impending retirement. “But the way the sport works is very difficult.”
(Above: Frey/TPN/Getty Images)
