Danielle Collins completed a fairytale triumph as she took down Elena Rybakina 7-5, 6-3 to win her first ever WTA 1000 title in her farewell year in her home state at the
Miami Open.
It was certainly what dreams are made of, but it also is a stark contrast to just weeks ago as she confirmed. Collins said that her boyfriend was having to help her do basic tasks as she could barely walk after suffering a back injury in Austin. As has been noted also, Collins suffers with endometriosis which in itself is constant pain and these two coupled together meant a title win that was certainly not expected.
"Two weeks ago looked a little different," said Collins. "I was coming off a back injury that happened in Austin. I was devastated not to be able to finish out that tournament."
"I went to Indian Wells and had multiple days off in a row. I had a few days, not exaggerating, I literally couldn't walk. I was having to have my boyfriend help me a lot."
"It was awful. There were a lot of tears about, oh, my gosh, I have played all these tournaments, I have worked so hard for this, and now we're at Indian Wells and Miami and this is happening, like, why?"
"Luckily with I think the help of the physical therapy and chiropractor we were able to kind of get it under control and make some adjustments too with some of my training and recovery and got it to a place where it was more manageable. After Indian Wells I was able to get a couple good days of practice
"I felt pretty confident, but it was still the amount of time that I was practicing on court and the type of drills that we were doing, I was, like, this is going to be hard, going into Miami."
"I think what makes some of these players the best in the world is that they learn how to play around those things."That's the thing that I have learned the most this tournament is, okay, it's never going to be 100% and you've got to figure out a way to, even though you have those challenges, work through it and get through it."