Restart because of suffering
Uncomfortable questions annoy Collins after his great triumph
March 31, 2024, 11:14 a.m
In Miami, Danielle Collins wins a Masters tournament for the first time – a few months before the end of her career as a professional tennis player. This raises questions as to whether the 30-year-old doesn’t want to continue. Collins, however, is determined and points to her health challenges.
Danielle Collins took a deep breath. The nagging question about the irrevocability of her decision to end her career naturally arose again and inevitably in view of the greatest sporting success in the life of the US tennis star. But this time Collins remained completely relaxed. “No, I won’t reconsider that,” said the newly crowned winner of the Miami Open with a smile: “But I consider it an honor that so many people would like to see me continue playing.”
Collins, 30, born in Florida, won the biggest tournament in her home state with a 7-5, 6-3 final win against Kazakh Jelena Rybakina. As an unseeded player. In 2022, Collins was in the final of the Australian Open, but never before had he won such a high-quality title as he did at the Miami “1000 Series”. So she will stop at her creative peak at the end of the year. But that’s just one story.
The other story is “bigger than tennis,” as Collins said in Miami, a story of torment and illness, doubt and priorities. Because Collins sacrifices the shape of her life that she has worked so hard for for the most important time of her life. “I have health problems that make my life away from the tennis court a little difficult,” she said, dramatically understating things. Because two bad diagnoses that late starter Collins received – she only switched to the professional tour at the age of 22 – have already made her career as a competitive athlete more than “a little difficult”.
“If I were a man, I certainly wouldn’t have to do this”
In 2018, Collins was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory autoimmune disease that German player Eva Lys also struggles with. Collins got this under control with medication and diet, but still suffered from severe period pain, as he had since his college days. So severe that she once collapsed on the court crying during a tournament.
She made public the findings she received after many visits to the doctor at the Australian Open 2018: endometriosis, a disease that affects many women but is rarely mentioned, especially in professional sports. Collins was at a “point where I couldn’t take it either physically or mentally.” Therapies and an operation to remove a large uterine cyst brought relief. And allowed Collins to get better and better. She was seventh in the world rankings in 2022, but after a dip in performance she is now listed again at number 22.
However, her illness and the measures that followed made it difficult for Collins to become pregnant. And the older she gets, the harder it gets. Because tennis means a lot to her, but by no means everything, she made a “really big life decision,” as she said: her life belongs to tennis until the end of 2024, then to family planning: “That should actually be very understandable be.”
It is also understandable that Collins reacted very thinly to repeated questions about the usefulness of ending her career during the Miami tournament. “It’s a deeply personal decision that I obviously have to constantly justify,” she said. “I think if I were a man, I certainly wouldn’t have to do that.”