On Sunday the American tennis player Danielle Collins won the Charleston Open, a WTA 500 tournament that is played every year in South Carolina, beating the Russian Daria Kasatkina in the final with a score of 6-2, 6-1. Danielle Collins is thirty years old and the previous week she had also won the Miami Open, a WTA 1000, the most prestigious category in tennis after the four Grand Slam tournaments. The two titles arrived thanks to a still open streak of thirteen consecutive matches: they are a notable result for the level of the opponents faced by Collins, but they are above all surprising because at the beginning of the year Collins had announced that this would be his last season as a professional, and who would then retire.
In the last two and a half weeks Collins has been playing very well: she has won 26 of the 28 sets played, overcoming opponents such as world number 4 Elena Rybakina (beaten 7-5, 6-3 in the final in Miami) and number 6 Ons Jabeur ( 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 in the round of 32 in Charleston). Before this period she had only won two other titles (a WTA 500 and a WTA 250), both in 2021, and in any case none as important as the Miami tournament won last week. In 2022, however, she had reached the final of the Australian Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments. In short, it seems that Collins is expressing her best level just at the moment in which she decided to retire from tennis.
The recent victories have brought her up to 15th position in the women’s world ranking, which however is not the best of her career because in 2022 she also reached number 7 in the world. However, she is the fourth tennis player to have collected the most points this season so far, and it therefore seems plausible that she will rise further in the coming months. At the moment she is not far from the score needed to enter the top 10 in the world.
Highlights of the Charleston final against Daria Kasatkina
Despite all this, Collins said he has not changed his mind about retiring, because the reasons for his choice are still valid and mostly derive from a physical condition. In fact, Collins suffers from endometriosis, a chronic disease that affects approximately one in ten women and which causes the creation, in other parts of the body, of portions of the endometrium (the tissue that covers the internal cavity of the uterus, which is expelled during Menses). Endometriosis causes chronic inflammation of the female genital organs, and is a disease that often goes undiagnosed or diagnosed late and can result in infertility.
Already in 2022 Collins had spoken about her condition, which in her career has often limited her and forced her to miss many matches. Because of these physical problems, and also the fact that she became a top-level tennis player relatively late (she entered the top 100 in the world for the first time at the age of 25), Collins played a total of 398 professional matches: only 26 more than world number 1 Iga Swiatek, who however is 22 years old. She announced her retirement after being beaten by Swiatek (4-6, 6-3, 4-6) at the last Australian Open.
Tennis-wise, Collins is an aggressive player, capable of very powerful shots, which have been particularly effective in recent weeks. Some are speculating that in a psychologically tough sport like tennis, the prospect of retirement is helping Collins play with less pressure and greater mental freedom. She herself suggested it in some recent statements. After the victory in the Miami tournament, for example, she clearly said that this situation could have positively influenced her results: «I thought: I want to enjoy every minute. It’s my last year, it’s my last tournaments. I want to remember these moments.”
On the same occasion, however, Collins also said: “I understand that many people want to see me continue playing, but I have some health problems that make things off the pitch a little more difficult.” The thirteen consecutive victories achieved in recent weeks are his best winning streak ever: in the previous one, in 2021, it stopped at twelve.
2024-04-08 10:17:28
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