AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 26, 2022

Danielle Collins

Press Conference

D. COLLINS/A. Cornet

7-5, 6-1

THE MODERATOR: (Off microphone.)

DANIELL COLLINS: I feel pretty good right now. Yeah, I had a great match today. Have had some great matches along the way at this tournament. Really happy about how I'm feeling physically and mentally. Yeah, hopefully we can keep it going.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You mentioned the Australian Open medical teams on court. Did you need much patching up?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I mean, I definitely had to take some time to recover, especially after a few days of singles and doubles back to back. Consulting with the medical team, having the physical therapist to assist me in recovering, making sure I got what I needed to feel my best. Yeah, very grateful for having that staff here and people that are so knowledgeable and experts in their field.

Q. (Off microphone.)

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I think there was a level during that time before I had my diagnosis and before I had surgery of when something is progressively getting worse, it's a slow progression, I think your body in some ways gets used to it.

When so much of the advice you've gotten over the years, certainly the advice that I had gotten over the years, is that painful periods are normal, taking antiinflammatories on a regular basis is normal. I felt like it was something that I just had to deal with.

It finally got to the point where I couldn't deal any longer with it physically or mentally. Once I was able to kind of get the proper diagnosis and the surgery, I feel like it's helped me so much not just from a physical standpoint but from a mental standpoint. Kind of what you touched on.

When you're dealing with that type of physical pain multiple weeks out of the month, you're not putting yourself in a position to be able to perform consistently and to be at your best whether as an athlete or a person.

Yeah, I hope that answers that.

Q. Do you feel freer now that pain isn't part of your life?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I definitely feel more free. I feel like I have solutions to be able to manage it when there are things that come up.

Yeah, I think I certainly feel a lot freer just not having to deal with the symptoms that I used to deal with, that not being a continuous issue that I'm dealing with on a daily basis.

Q. About the Kasatkina thing last year, you said that people didn't understand, talked about it as if you were being a bit weak by collapsing in that way, and it was hard for you to take when you knew how difficult it was.

DANIELL COLLINS: I'm not entirely sure what you're referencing about Kasatkina.

I feel like I've had a lot of support from players across the board with my journey with this. I think that's been tremendous for me having the support from the other players, yeah.

Q. Obviously your situation, your medical condition, is particularly extreme and difficult. 50% of tennis players have periods and menstruate and have varying degrees of challenges that go with that. Do you think it's something that female players would benefit from being spoken about generally more openly?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I think anytime you're dealing with injuries, I think there's certainly a science behind looking at your menstrual cycles, consulting with doctors who specialize in these types of conditions, to be able to help maybe recognize if some of those injuries could be related to something hormonally or if it could be endometriosis, especially with back injuries and lower abdominal injuries. I think it's an important discussion that medical teams can have with athletes.

Q. The fact of your presurgery period and career, thinking what if you had been diagnosed earlier, do you feel you're catching up on achieving the sorts of things you may have been more capable of had you been diagnosed earlier?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I mean, I do think a lot of times it's easy to forget that I didn't turn pro until I was 22 or 23 years old. This is now maybe my fourth full year on tour. I haven't been on tour as long as players that are much, much younger than me.

I do think had I had the diagnosis a little bit earlier, I think it certainly could have benefited me. But it's just one of those things that didn't happen, so now it's great that we know what was going on, we were able to go in surgically and fix it. Now I'm able to live my best life and be able to feel like a normal person.

Q. How do you compare this run to the semis to the one three years ago now you're post surgery? How different do you feel as a person and player?

DANIELL COLLINS: I think aside from surgery, I've gotten a lot physically stronger over the last couple of years. My strength and conditioning, my fitness, it's been one of the most important areas of my training and focuses.

I think that has transferred over to my tennis, the way that I'm able to play physically with my serving. I think my serving has gotten a lot stronger. I think my stamina on court has improved tremendously. I think just overall power and speed has improved. That's something that I focused so much on over the last couple years.

I think that's probably the biggest difference to where I was, if I compare my semifinal run here in 2019.

Q. The semifinal you played previously, how will that help you experience-wise again? And if you could talk about each of your possible opponents.

DANIELL COLLINS: I've tried to catch some of the match that's going on right now. Some really high-level tennis. No matter who I'm going to play, they're going to be very tough competitors, very relentless, powerful, strong, everything you would expect in a semifinal.

What was the first part of your question? Sorry, I'm getting tired.

Q. Having been there before, is that going to help?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I think now that I've made quarterfinals at French and semifinals here before, I think I can use those experiences to certainly help me in the tight-pressure moments on court. I can use that to my advantage.

Last time I was here in the semifinals I had never done that before. I've made some deeper runs in tournaments since then. Hopefully I can carry the confidence that I've gained over the last couple years and be able to use that to my advantage.

Q. You've had success against Ash Barty in the past. Her slice backhand, how is it that you address that?

DANIELL COLLINS: I really admire Ash as a player. I love the variety that she has in her game. I think it's something that can be tricky against different opponents, something that's helped her be so successful and become the No. 1 player in the world.

Q. You've become a pretty beloved icon of tennis Twitter. Video montages of you and your laughs in your press conferences. Have you sensed any embrace from people?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I feel like I have really great fans and great support. When I'm in tournaments I really like to kind of bubble myself. It was something that I actual -- I follow a lot of the women's soccer. That was something that I learned from them when they were in the finals of the World Cup. They were off social media for a while. I think they were, like, not even sometimes checking their phones. I had read an article about how that really helped them as a team.

That's something that I've tried to incorporate into what I do during big tournaments just to eliminate some of the noise, distraction, and just screen time honestly. I feel like we spend so much time looking at our phones. To be able to kind of get a break from that can be nice.

When I'm not on social media, I do miss my interactions with the fan pages that follow me and do the daily posts. I feel like I get so much love and support from there. It's a tough thing to balance sometimes.

Q. (No microphone.)

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, yeah. I'm really only kind of responding to my mom, my dad, my brother, two close friends. That's kind of it. I'm not getting into responding or anything to people right now just because I'm trying to focus on what I'm doing, trying to be really present and in the moment. That's one of my New Year's resolutions, to be off my phone and be more present.

I have such great support here. Trying to embrace all of these awesome moments, not always be like this 24/7. That's something I'm trying to work on.

Q. You mentioned your improvement in strength and conditioning. It takes time to elevate that over the years. What has been the key there? Were there new exercises to your strength and conditioning or load?

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think one of the things I struggled with the most when I first got on tour is scheduling, trying to figure out what kind of scheduling works best for me in terms of how many tournaments I want to play in a row, when I kind of want to taper back, then trying to arrange my strength and conditioning sessions around those tournaments, also fitting in training blocks where I can really focus back on that.

When you're making deep runs in tournaments, it's a little bit challenging to be able to get full strength and conditioning sessions in when you're on the road. It's been a trial-and-error process.

I've luckily had the privilege of working with a really great strength and conditioning coach for the last four years pretty much since I've been out of college, Josh Cooper in Tampa. He's been excellent with helping me and my programs, being really understanding of how to taper back when I'm having large volume on court, a lot of time on court.

It's been a bit of a learning process for both of us. I think we've learned a lot and we're doing pretty good.

Q. You mentioned surfing and lessons you've taken from watching surfing. You're a learner, something you like to do. From soaking in what you see across other sports, what have been some of the biggest ones that have helped you in recent years to change your perspective of your career?

DANIELL COLLINS: This is a fun question. I really like this one because I used to be really scared of heights. I still am scared of heights. I don't like being up in tall buildings or being close to a balcony. I went on a girl's trip with Bethanie. One day I woke up and said, What's on the agenda today?

She said, We're going rock climbing.

I was like, Oh, no, this is not going to be a good day.

She's like, If you don't want to do it, we don't have to do it.

I said, No, no, we'll do it.

We went out. I was terrified. It was one of the most scary experiences for me relying on equipment, the what ifs. I'm not talking about, like, free solo climbing. We were locked in, strapped in, we had all of the safety precautions and a great guide to help. It was a nerve-wracking experience for me.

I think halfway through it, had to be at least a four-hour experience, halfway through it I realized every time I step out on the court, it's not life or death. For people in rock climbing, it can be.

That was a really big realization for me and something I think helped me grow to kind of step out of my comfort zone and try something I had never done before, something that I was really scared of doing. That was a huge moment of growth for me.

That was back in, oh my God, when was it? It wasn't in the summer. It was before COVID. I can't remember. If you go on Bethanie's Instagram, you might be able to find the scenes of it. There were some tears, definitely some tears along the way. But I got through it. I would actually do it again.

Q. On the medical issues you've been talking about, when was the surgery? How long was the recovery? When was it that you felt totally comfortable with yourself?

DANIELL COLLINS: You want to know when the surgery was?

Q. Yes.

DANIELL COLLINS: Yeah, the surgery was back in April. I took seven weeks to recover, then I played the French Open, so...

Q. What for you is most gratifying about the success you're having right now?

DANIELL COLLINS: I think one of the things that's most gratifying is just the amount of work over such a long period of time kind of coming all together. It's not something that happens over a year or two years. It starts from the time you're a kid, all of the hard work you've put in.

I think the most gratifying part of it all is thinking back to how many early mornings my dad got up with me to go practice with me before I went to school. I remember one time when my dad had a cold. He didn't want to get up out of bed. I cried. I said, Please, I want to go to practice, at least if I could go for a run or something.

I remember him getting on the bike and accompanying me on my run when he didn't feel well. Being able to share those moments with my parents, just thinking back on all of the hard work that they allowed me to do. They were the ones that drove me to practice, tried to provide me with the best resources in the area, to get me in with the best coaches and players. I can't tell you how many hours a day they used to drive just trying to get me from one place to another so I could get everything I needed to get into. That's probably the most gratifying part.