In January 2024, 30-year-old Danielle Collins announced her retirement from professional tennis. She wanted to end her career on a positive note. She wanted to start a family. It was time.
Despite sports analysts generally acting like any athlete over 28 years old is ancient, the pundits were shocked by her decision. Especially as the season got underway.
For those unacquainted, here are Collins’s 2024 highlights: The Florida native is ranked 8th in the world right now. She won the Miami Open in March and the Charleston Open in April. In July, she made it to the round of 16 at Wimbledon and shortly after represented the United States in the Olympics. She plays an aggressive and electrifying game and the media cannot seem to understand why she’s walking away.
She’s doing so well right now, the talking heads said. Why would she retire? Then a notion that became a common refrain: Her high-caliber performance must be because retirement has taken the pressure off.
“It’s a rather silly narrative,” Collins says from her home in St. Petersburg as she rests between her Olympics run and the US Open. “But it exists. For some reason, people totally forgot about my previous success and acted like this has never happened until I announced my retirement.”
In reality, 2024 is far from her first taste of glory. In 2020, she reached the quarterfinals at the French Open. In 2022, she was ranked 7th in the world and made the finals at the Australian Open.
Still, even if the storyline is slightly flawed, the level of attention she’s getting this year is well-deserved. The true story here is that this season is the result of years of hard work, strength, and Collins’ unique ability to be genuinely and unapologetically her badass self.
“I’m not for everyone”
In April at the Madrid Open, down a set, one all in the second and about to serve at deuce, Collins looked up into the stands and barked at a heckler.
“You come out here and play and you do what I do, okay?” she said.
It was the perfect response to a rude disruption. The crowd cheered. She continued play and eventually won, adding to her 15-match winning streak.
Tennis is a game of controlled aggression, each match reaching explosive levels of pressure. Collins releases the tension freely. She is known to roar in celebration of points, lash out in frustration, and fight for every ball with intensity. She speaks her mind. Some tennis fans love it. Others, not so much.
“Of course I get feedback from people being like, ‘Oh, Danielle Collins makes me so upset when she acts like this,’” she says. “And it’s like, why do I make you upset? Because I’m not living up to your expectations of how I should be? Because that’s not healthy to put on anyone. I think women and men have different societal standards that they’re supposed to live up to. And I’m definitely more like a guy in a lot of ways. And that’s gonna rub some people the wrong way.”
Collins doesn’t care. In some ways, because she has to be in the public eye, that’s her superpower. During her college playing days when she was at the University of Virginia, she worked with a sports psychologist to learn how to tend to her mental health on and off the court. She learned the importance of self-care and creating space and boundaries.
For many years as a pro player, she prioritized privacy to save her own sanity. But she’s been more open in recent months with interviews and social media, which she admits is slightly out of her comfort zone.
“I’m an introverted extrovert,” she says. “I’ve got a strong personality, and I know with that I’m not for everyone.”
Of course, she’s not going out of her way to rouse the haters—she’s just not going to take any crap. In being more open with the media, she’s modeling for others what she thinks is the most important aspect of mental health: being truly and authentically yourself.
“I think just embracing who you are and leaning fully into that and not fighting it with resistance is important,” she says. “All of us have unique qualities and things that make us who we are. When you own it, when you get to that place, I think it can be very empowering.”
“I think just embracing who you are and leaning fully into that and not fighting it with resistance is important. All of us have unique qualities and things that make us who we are. When you own it, when you get to that place, I think it can be very empowering.” —Danielle Collins
A woman of resilience
Collins turned fully professional in 2016, meaning she’s been on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) pro tour for about eight years. The success she’s seen in the past three is the culmination of years of hard work.“If you’re trying to be really, really good at something, it’s never a straight shot to the top,” she says. “There are setbacks. You take steps forward and you take steps back.”
She knows this is a life lesson too, not just tennis. Collins may understand better than most that the ups and downs are essential to making gains.
“I almost like to think of it as the stock market at this point in my career,” she says. “There are days that are good and others that are shockingly bad. You just have to be able to accept it and stomach the different emotions that come with ups and downs.”
The 2024 Olympics, she says, are the perfect example of dealing with extremes. It was her first Olympic games and she felt honored to compete for her country alongside cherished teammates. She experienced the highest of highs just being there, then winning her first and second-round matches, and then the first set of her third-round match 6-0 versus Colombia’s Camila Osorio.
But the playing conditions were less than ideal. It was hot in Paris, like 97 degrees hot, (not to mention studies have shown that tennis courts are 10 to 20 degrees hotter than regular temps depending on court surface) and the athletes didn’t have access to cold water on the court. The second set did not feel good.
“I found myself down,” she says. “I was getting really frustrated and thinking ‘What am I doing wrong?’”
Physically, she was spent. But mentally, she knew she could push.
“I said to myself, ‘I feel really awful right now, but I could feel really good in a few minutes here if I turn this around.’”
The mindset switch helped her take the third set for the win. (Unfortunately, the heat wreaked havoc on her body and she was forced to retire with an abdominal injury in the next round in a dramatic showdown with Iga Świątek.)
At the lowest point of the match versus Osorio, she made the decision to go hard. Sure, sometimes your opponent will play a little better than you and you have to accept that, she says. But when you’re in a lull, working through the challenge and convincing yourself that success is just minutes away might be the push you need.
That tenacity—the unflinching ability to fight through—is unique to Collins. This is a woman who spent five of her professional playing years dealing with untreated pain. She doesn’t think about it like that or dwell on it, but it’s a piece of her story she’s open about.
In 2019, after a breakthrough year professionally, she faced extreme pain and at the age of 25 was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that causes painful inflammation of the joints.
As she started treatment, she wrote on Instagram that the diagnosis was validating. She was looking forward to starting treatment and felt positive about continuing to play professionally. The disease was just another opponent to face and she made a strategic plan to fight it.
Then in 2021, she faced another medical obstacle. She needed surgery for endometriosis—an excruciating condition where tissue similar to the tissue that lines the uterus grows outside of it—and had a tennis-ball-sized cyst removed.
When she announced her withdrawal from the Charleston Open that year, she wrote in a post that the endometriosis pain caused her “physical agony.” It threatened her ability to become pregnant. She dealt with some aspect of the condition daily and it was affecting her performance.
Mere months after the surgery, she won two WTA titles and followed it with her blockbuster 2022 year.
For her, balance is key and she says it’s a lesson for all of us. “There are days that you’re gonna feel crappy,” she says. “There are days that you’re gonna feel tired. But there should also be some days where you feel good, right? You can’t have every day be a challenge or it wouldn’t be very fun.”
“If you’re trying to be really, really good at something, it’s never a straight shot to the top. There are setbacks. You take steps forward and you take steps back.” —Danielle Collins
The retirement question
The 2024 season is far from over, and yet Collins thinks about retirement. A lot. She’s been asked more times than she can count if she’s been reconsidering her decision to leave the sport at the end of the year and the answer is always the same: No.
She wants to start a family. In a column she penned for BBC Sport, she explained why this is urgent: “Some research estimates up to 30 to 50 percent of women with endometriosis experience infertility, and time isn’t on my side either. I have a smaller window available to get pregnant and to make sure that hopefully happens.”
She has other goals too: She wants to prepare for and run a marathon at the end of this year. She wants to spend more time with Quincy, her beloved 5-year-old poodle mix, who, she admits, is already quite spoiled and eats homemade meals like pan-seared salmon with roasted sweet potatoes, peas, and different greens.
But even as she dreams of milestones outside of tennis, Collins is focused on what’s right in front of her. Right now, that’s healing. The grueling conditions at the Olympics did not leave her unscathed—she’s recovering from a strained abdominal muscle that forced her to sit out early August tournaments.
She’s hoping to compete in the Monterey Open and then play her final Grand Slam at the US Open. She’s looking forward to playing in New York where the notoriously rowdy crowds embrace her brand of swagger.
After that? Guadalajara. A series in Asia. She’s determined to make the year-end tournament in Saudi Arabia, an event she hasn’t played before.
“I’m still ticking some goals off my list that I haven’t achieved yet in my career,” she says. “I think it’ll be really cool to do it in my final year.”
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