American’s surprise semifinal run
Collins rallies in Australian Open
MELBOURNE, Australia – Prior to this Australian Open, Danielle Collins had never won a Grand Slam tournament match in five previous attempts.
Until last year’s Miami Open, where she surprisingly reached the semifinals, Collins was an under-the-radar former college player trying to do the unthinkable, make a name for herself in women’s tennis.
Now Collins, a vivacious, feisty, never-back-away-from-a-fight battler, is having the tournament of her life. In the lone Australian Open women’s quarterfinal battle between two unseeded players, Collins reached her first Grand Slam semifinal with a 2-6, 7-5, 6-1 win over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Tuesday.
The 25-year-old American is not likely to go unnoticed any longer, that’s for sure. Collins started the 2018 season ranked No. 167 and was No. 36 to start this year.
“This has all been a really incredible experience,” Collins said. “This time last year I was playing a challenger (tournament) in Newport Beach (California). I think I’m really embracing it. It makes it a lot easier when you play in front of great fans and really good energy.”
Self-assuredness is a hallmark of Collins’ personality no matter if she’s winning or losing, and she admits to being a trash-talker even during practice sessions.
After surrendering the first set quickly, Collins raced to a 5-2 lead in the second set, but Pavlyuchenkova seemed to regain her footing. Collins would need to play five more games — and required three set points — before drawing the match even at one set apiece.
Riding the momentum, Collins raced to a 5-0 lead in the third set before Pavlyuchenkova managed to save a match point to hold her serve in the sixth game. But the effort was of little comfort for the Russian, who watched Collins take advantage of a third match point to advance. While the points won differential wasn’t that dramatic over the course of the 2-hour, 16-minute match with Collins winning 100 points to 91 for Pavyluchenkova, the divide in the third set was stunning as Collins won 30 of the 41 points played.
“I definitely faced my challenges today,” Collins said. “I think I really got it together in the third set and went out with confidence, kind of cleaned some areas of my game up.”
Collins nearly landed on the wrong side of her first-round match in this tournament just as she had done every other time she played in a major. She was three points from defeat to 14th seed Julia Goerges before recovering to get her first Grand Slam match victory. She also beat No. 2 seed Angelique Kerber in the round of 16.
The 25-year-old from St. Petersburg, Florida, is a two-time NCAA champion who graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in media studies in 2016.
Collins is the daughter of a former commercial fisherman who is now a landscaper.
“My dad’s 80 years old and still goes to work every day,” Collins said. “He’s the hardest worker I know.”
Collins loved the sport of tennis from when she first started playing. But unlike many of her peers, she was never that star junior player, which aided in her decision to pursue a college education.
“I think not being a child prodigy, not being a superstar at a young age, certainly humbled me, made me in a way work harder for things,” she said. “I think I was talented and athletic, but maybe not to the level that other players were at, like, 14, 15, 16.
“I was kind of like playing from behind because I wasn’t a child prodigy. I went a different route. I wasn’t really sure if I could make it playing professional tennis when I was that age.”
College players typically haven’t become household names once joining the WTA tour, and in recent years almost none of the up-and-coming women choose a tennis path that coordinated with earning a university diploma.
Collins is the first college player to reach a major quarterfinal since Lisa Raymond did so in the 2004 Australian Open.
This marks the fifth consecutive year that an unseeded woman will be showcased in the Australian Open semifinals. Madison Keys was unseeded in 2015, Johanna Konta in 2016, Coco Vandeweghe and Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in 2017 and Elise Mertens in 2018.
Collins was one of five American women who reached the fourth round, with Serena Williams, Sloane Stephens, Amanda Anisimova and Keys. Only Williams and Collins stepped into the quarterfinals, and now Collins is the first to the semifinals.
The 16th-seeded Williams looked to join Collins, a fellow Floridian, in the final four when she squared off with seventh-seeded Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic (Tuesday night ET).
Collins will play eighth-seeded Petra Kvitova, a crafty southpaw, in the semifinals. Collins lost to the two-time Wimbledon champion in the first round of the Brisbane tournament this month.