Nearly a year ago, in the heat of the Australian summer, Danielle Collins was reduced to a level of pain that she would not wish on another soul. By the third set of her match against Daria Kasatkina in the Phillip Island Trophy, an event held at Melbourne Park during the second week of the Australian Open, she fell to the ground while severely cramping in her abdominal muscles and pelvis.
Through her tears, Collins resorted to hitting underarm serves and throwing up desperate moonballs as she fell 6-1 in the final set. A week later, she withdrew from a tournament in Adelaide with acute back pain that MRI scans failed to identify a cause for.
One year on, Collins has returned to the scene of those brutal moments and on Monday continued one of the most impressive and heartening stories in the sport by reaching the quarter-final of the Australian Open, defeating Elise Mertens 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in just shy of three hours.
When Collins was in constant discomfort, she did not know what the problem was. Consultations with doctors all yielded the same unconvincing responses – that her period pains were normal and anti-inflammatory medicine would help. They did not. Her health became progressively worse and in April 2021, Collins underwent emergency surgery to treat endometriosis.
Endometriosis is an extremely painful condition in which tissue similar to that which lines the uterus grows outside of it, and affects an estimated one in 10 women. For Collins, it marked the second major health issue of her short professional career having also been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2018, an autoimmune disease that causes painful swelling in the joints.
“Super-satisfying and rewarding,” Collins said of her quarter-final run a year on. “Any time you’re going to have a surgery like I had, I think any athlete would find it nerve-racking knowing how your body is going to recover after that type of surgery. It’s extremely painful and scary.”
Despite all of the obstacles before her, an athlete fighting her own body, Collins continues to rise. Since returning to the court following surgery, her quality of life has improved significantly and she has played some of the best tennis of her career. Collins was an Australian Open semi-finalist in 2019 but she has never been as consistent as in recent months. She won her first two WTA titles in consecutive weeks last summer and since mid-July she has a 27-6 (82%) record.
“Before my surgery and before I was on the proper medication, I was always having to adjust my training around my cycle, because of how painful my periods were,” said Collins. “And now with things being more consistent, I’m able to train more consistently and not have to have such drastic changes, especially the week of my cycle.”
On Monday, Mertens and Collins duelled in a deciding set of the highest quality. Collins is armed with one of the most destructive, versatile two-handed backhands in the game and she combines her high-octane shot-making with dynamic athleticism.
With the match finely balanced at 4-4, 30-30 in the final set, Collins took control. She obliterated winners off both forehand and backhand wings, punctuating them with cries of “come on” as she reached the third major quarter-final of her career.
“I’m just very relieved that the surgery went well for me, and that now I’m able to perform more consistently from a physical standpoint,” she said. “I think that’s helped me a lot mentally, knowing that. It’s given me a lot more confidence on court. I just feel, as a person, more consistent on a day-to-day basis, because I’m not having such terrible fluctuations and such painful, really just awful days around those periods.”
Collins is a singular character in professional tennis and her exuberance on the court has not always meshed well with everyone. But the fire she exhibits on court is the exact same toughness that has allowed her to face the many obstacles before her and keep moving on.
