With retirement in sight, it's one last lap for perfectionist Danielle Collins

Danielle Collins experienced an epiphany of sorts on the morning she was to play in the final of the recent Miami Open. Suddenly, she had the urge to absorb the entire experience leading up to playing in the final of a major tournament instead of focusing—as usual—on her upcoming match to the exclusion of all else.

“I had that mentality of, like, I'm going to enjoy every minute of this,” Collins told reporters after her win over Elena Rybakina, the best tournament win of Collins’ career. “This is my last year, this is my last season, and these are some of my final events. I wanted to remember these moments.”

So, on their way to the courts, Collins and her small party changed the playlist in the car to better reflect her carefree mood, cranked up the volume, and rushed headlong into the challenge of taking on a recent Grand Slam champion ranked 47 places above Collins.

“I was, like, ‘Oh, this is going to be the first time I play a finals in my home state and have a lot of crowd support,” she recalled. “This is so exciting!’”

We know that despite the odds this story turned out to have an ending worthy of a fairy tale for Collins, a Florida native from St. Petersburg. It was in Miami that she produced her breakthrough win as a professional at the 2018 version of this event. In one of her earliest WTA main-draw appearances, Collins emerged from qualifying to reach the semifinals via an upset of No. 8 seed Venus Williams.

To see her come back all these years later to win her home state tournament—it just kind of brings things full circle. I’ve seen this coming for a long time. For her, it's been about all the pieces falling together during the right time, and the chips fell in the right order this past week. Ben Maxwell, Collins' friend and part-time coach

Ben Maxwell, the some-time coach and full-time friend who helped Collins navigate her big week in Miami, told me: “To see her come back all these years later to win her home state tournament—it just kind of brings things full circle. I’ve seen this coming for a long time. For her, it's been about all the pieces falling together during the right time, and the chips fell in the right order this past week.”

Back in January, Collins announced that she is retiring at the end of the year. Her achievement in Miami doesn’t appear to have changed her mind even though she is just 30-years old. Her decision caught the tennis community by surprise.

“I feel like all of these questions (about postponing retirement) are coming from such a good place, because I feel like a lot of people would like to continue seeing me play well,” she said in Miami. “But I have some health challenges that make things away from the court a little more difficult.”

Collins, who wants to start a family, has struggled with endometriosis, a condition that can impact a woman’s ability to bear children. Her reluctance to talk about the situation in greater detail—“It’s a very emotional and personal thing,” she has said—makes it easy to overlook the potential impact it has had on her decision.

“If you're dealing with a condition like endometriosis and you're trying to perform as a female athlete, I mean, that's a big layer of complications,” ESPN analyst Pam Shriver told me. “I don't think that can be underestimated.”

Collins, who put in four years in college, has played 375 pro matches—just 29 more than No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek, who is eight years her junior. Collins was already 24 but barely inside the Top 100 (at No. 93) at the time of her breakthrough in 2018. Yet less than a year later, she punched through to the Australian Open semifinals in just her fourth Grand Slam main-draw appearance. She would go on to win two WTA titles and, in her closest brush with a major title, she lost to Ashleigh Barty in the Australian Open final of 2022.

If there’s an up-side to what appears to be this premature end to an outstanding career, it may be that the decision to retire has relieved some of the familiar burdens that Collins, like any of her peers, has borne.

“She seems to have freed herself up more,” Shriver suggested, referring to the obligations and pressures created by the rankings and the never-ending cycle of tournaments. Collins, up to No. 22 in the rankings, won’t have to worry about chasing points, or how many she will have to defend in Miami next year. “That's all done,” Shriver added “If she's made up her mind, then she's just all-in for every tournament, and she kind of doesn't have the long-term stress of worrying about all the other stuff.”

Collins has blazed a unique trail, creating more success on the pro tour than any other former collegian. She earned a degree in four years at the University of Virginia, picking up two NCAA national singles titles along the way. That choice had less to do with career maneuverings than a non-negotiable, personal commitment. The Collins family lived modestly (Walter Collins, Danielle’s father, worked as a landscaper well into his 80s). Danielle was hellbent on becoming the first in her family to complete college, and recognized the value.  “It costs over $50,000 to go to UVA for a year,” she said back in 2018, “And I was really happy being on a team, being in the classroom.”

I think so much of what we do, we're like perfectionists out there, We want perfect preparation, we want the perfect warmup, we want the perfect practice, we want feeling perfect all the time. Danielle Collins

Collins developed her game under financial constraints, with a healthy exposure to public courts. She learned to fend for herself, and to meet adversity head-on. It’s no wonder that her style is very aggressive, her personality expressive. But the popular “Danimal” nickname only hits the right note when it comes to the way she pumps her fist or wallops her forehand. Collins has no qualms about retiring partly because, a self-described “homebody” she has no interest in the limelight, the trappings of athletic celebrity, or the relentless grind of a top player’s endless quest for perfection.

After she won in Miami, Collins was asked if seeing the finish line of career had contributed to her success. She said, “I just don't really feel like I have the time to kind of sit and ponder and get too deep into those thoughts. The day-to-day [work] with us athletes is a lot. It's more than a 9:00 to 5:00 job, because it's just around the clock. Honestly, I'm just so consumed with doing all the things I need to do to get prepared for the next day.”

Maxwell, the men’s and women’s tennis coach at Florida’s Eckerd College, has known Collins for the better part of a decade. He said he “wear(s) a lot of hats” in their unique relationship: adviser, hitting partner, sounding board. He’s also one of the favorite objects of her robust appetite for punking friends. He can’t be confused with being a “typical” tennis coach any more than Collins can be described as a “typical” tennis pro.

“I've always been available for her at the times that she needs,” he said. “But she's also a person who has figured it out on her own as she’s navigated the ups and downs of life, the ups and downs of playing on tour and traveling the world. That's really a key factor for her. There's nobody outside influencing her decision to retire, or the timing of her retirement.”

Or anything else, Maxwell might have added. For Collins is a WTA outlier who can leave you floundering for words in the attempt to neatly describe her. Is she a maverick? An iconoclast? A contrarian? An individualist? Clearly, she prefers to travel light. She insists on calling her own shots. She is indifferent to stardom and weary of managing her health issues, and the anxieties that come with it, after years of seeking the perfect shot, the perfect game, the perfect win.

“I think so much of what we do, we're like perfectionists out there,” Collins said. “We want perfect preparation, we want the perfect warmup, we want the perfect practice, we want feeling perfect all the time.”

Small wonder that Collins is eagerly looking forward to days spent taking her dog for leisurely walks, reading, and doing domestic chores. Perfection may not be all it’s cracked up to be. But as Collins learned in Miami, it can feel awfully good coming close to it.