The Billie Jean King Cup was supposed to be a retirement party for Danielle Collins — her last event before saying goodbye to tennis and hopefully starting a family.

Instead she arrives in Malaga to represent the United States having decided to prolong her career. Collins deals with endometriosis, a condition in which cells similar to those which line the uterus grow elsewhere in the body. In the lead-up to her proposed retirement, medical experts told her that her endometriosis would mean it would take longer than she had hoped to get pregnant. She decided to return to the court, announcing the reversal of her retirement in October.

“On one hand, it’s great that I have my career and that I have that to kind of fall back on while this next part of my journey in life gets postponed a little bit,” she told The Athletic in Riyadh last week, in her first in-depth interview since she announced four weeks ago that she wouldn’t be retiring.

“But at the same time, it’s not an easy thing dealing with endometriosis. It’s incredibly difficult.”

It was January 2024 when Collins announced her intention to retire from tennis, in part to try and start a family with boyfriend Brian Kipp. Speaking to The Athletic in Miami in March, she said: “I’ve loved what I’ve done and the opportunity and the doors it’s opened, but it’s not easy, and I am a homebody.

“If the format of tennis was different, it would be a totally different story and I’d probably reconsider it.

“But the way that this sport works, it’s very hard.”

In what was supposed to be a valedictory campaign, Collins, 31, exploded into one of the finest seasons of her career, winning her first WTA 1000 title in Miami and then the Charleston Open a week later, doubling her career titles in barely a week. She put together a 15-match winning streak, and her 70 percent win-rate for the year is second only to her 2021 campaign by less than a single percentage point.

Danielle Collins celebrates during her run to the Miami Open title, where she beat Elena Rybakina in the final. (Megan Briggs / Getty Images)

Then the problems began. She went out of the Olympics with a stomach muscle injury and after being upset by compatriot Caroline Dolehide in the first round of the U.S. Open, Collins admitted that she had run out of energy. “Sorry, I’m a little bit out of gas. I got a little tired,” she said in a news conference after the defeat.

At that point the prospect of Collins reversing her decision to retire seemed remote. Despite those late-season issues, which led her to play just five events following the French Open, she secured the best year-end ranking of her career (No. 11) and arrived in Riyadh as an alternate for the season-ending WTA Tour Finals. She didn’t play, but found practicing with her elite peers a boon and a reminder of just how good her season had been, as bittersweet as the reasons for it not being her last might be.

“I’ve had one of my best years on tour but while I had a period where I was feeling really good, I started having some issues again.

“And then I had to go through a bunch of different medical things to just figure out, ‘OK, what are my next steps?’ And that’s been really tough,” she said.

With Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro all absent, Collins is the highest-ranked player in the U.S. team for the Billie Jean King Cup finals, and will be the reference point for her compatriots this week and next. Team USA begins its campaign with a tie against Slovakia on Thursday, before the off-season and then the United Cup, which Collins will play before the Australian Open.

But as she explains, this next part of Collins’ career is about more than just tennis. She aims to be a source of positivity and affirmation for women and girls managing endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fertility, just as she has felt those things from others inside and outside tennis as she has come to understand and manage her expectations.

“I think as you get older, you play for things that are bigger than the sport,” she says.

“I know that I’ve been able to have a positive impact on a lot of people’s lives by sharing my story and being able to offer some inspiration at some level for women and for young girls that are watching.”

The experience has had a profound effect on her and is part of the reason she wants to keep playing — even if what Collins would really love to be doing next year is starting a family.

GO DEEPER

Danielle Collins wins the Miami Open — her way

Endometriosis affects around 10 per cent (190 million) of reproductive age women and girls globally, according to the World Health Organization, and can cause pelvic pain and extremely painful periods as well as making it harder for women to get pregnant. Getting a definite diagnosis requires a surgical procedure called a laparoscopy; blood tests, scans and medical examinations cannot provide certain results and the symptoms are shared with so many other conditions that women and girls frequently wait years spent in pain and discomfort to find out what is causing it.

Danielle Collins’ surprise exit to Caroline Dolehide at the U.S. Open at the time looked to be the end of her Grand Slam career. (Seth Wenig / Associated Press)

The weeks following Collins’ U.S. Open exit were punctuated by meetings with medical experts and that sense of going around in circles, desperately wanting a solution but finding again and again that with endometriosis and fertility it tends not to work like that. “You feel like you’re chasing your tail sometimes with the news that you get from your doctors because it can feel like Groundhog Day,” she says.

“Other times you feel like, ‘Wow, I’ve I’ve done treatment, I’ve had surgery. And yet this thing continues to be an issue.’ And you think, ‘How is it like this?’ But that’s the thing with endometriosis, it’s not this like a tangible thing that you can just fix and that it can just go away. It doesn’t really go away.”

Living in Florida, Collins was also seeing the damage of Hurricane Helene up close: “Driving through my childhood neighbourhood and seeing what has happened to so many families, it’s really hard to wrap your head around.

“It was incredibly painful to witness,” she says.

A few weeks after the hurricane dissipated, and having spent her time helping out her neighbours as best she could, Collins announced her retirement U-turn on Friday October 18.

“Dealing with endometriosis and fertility is a massive challenge for many women and something that I am actively traversing, but I am fully confident in the team I am working with. It is just going to take longer than I thought,” she wrote of her dream to start a family.

The positive response overwhelmed her, especially from her tennis peers.

“One of my biggest support systems is the people that are in tennis, the people that I compete against, the people that I’ve become friends with,” she says.

“Without that support system it would be incredibly difficult to deal with all this.”

The American’s openness about her health was spurred on by the support she received on and off the WTA Tour. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

The benefits of that system extend to her getting her diagnosis in the first place. After numerous visits to doctors and specialists with no clear answer to what was causing her symptoms, it was a friend on the WTA Tour who had undergone a laparoscopy who pointed her towards the possibility of endometriosis.

“I had a friend on tour that had endometriosis and she said to me, ‘I had surgery for this’. It changed my life and really helped me for a long period of time,” she says.

“Things have been a lot better for me since I’ve had the diagnosis. If it wasn’t for having that friend in that conversation, I don’t think I would have been steered in the right direction.”

The experience has left Collins feeling “obligated”, she says, to challenge the culture of silence and don’t ask, don’t tell that persists around fertility and women’s health. She recalls her school years in which teachers encouraged her to hide tampons and menstruation from public view, sneaking into a doctor’s or nurse’s office as quickly as possible and not telling anyone about what she might be going through.

“I definitely think there’s a huge taboo around menstrual cycles, fertility, any type of reproductive health issues. With my platform, I’m in a position to really bring awareness to something that doesn’t get talked about all the time,” she says.

“I want to be a help to someone because I’ve struggled with this for a long time in my life. And it took a long time to figure out what it was. I have another friend on tour that has a sister that has struggled with endometriosis and I met her at a tournament this year. We went to lunch and we sat down and talked to each other and when we were chatting it was like looking in a mirror.

“Any time I can reach my hand out to support someone, I will. It’s just my way of trying to give them back as much as possible.”

This is a very different Danielle Collins to the player who started her professional career relatively late after excelling in college tennis at the University of Virginia and who didn’t even own a passport until she was 22. When she first made it on to the WTA Tour, Collins was very private and resented the idea that she had to share her life with the public. A “very scary” experience with a stalker early on in her career had a “huge influence” on Collins in this regard, she says, leading her to be “very reserved and very closed off” before realizing that, in her words, “That mentality oftentimes rubs people up the wrong way. Privacy is very frowned upon by the general public.”

Collins didn’t come from a privileged background — her dad was a landscaper who worked until he was 80, her mom a pre-school teacher. She has always fought for everything and at times that found her at odds with the genteel world of tennis.

After her breakthrough in 2018, when she reached the Miami Open semifinals as a qualifier, beating Venus Williams along the way, she reached the Australian Open semifinals the following year and the French Open quarterfinals in 2020, before a run to the Australian Open final in 2022 where she lost to Ash Barty in two tight sets. That summer, she reached her career-high ranking of world No. 7, as her powerful serve, devastating backhand and never-quit attitude fused together in a whirlwind of talent and intensity. Always a fiercely determined competitor, she was putting it all together on court; it has taken a very private subject for her to show that same outspokenness off it.

Danielle Collins serving to Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic during the 2019 Australian Open semifinal. (Paul Crock / AFP via Getty Images)

“I think when people just watch tennis they only get a glimpse of what’s actually happening,” she says. “We’re fierce competitors, we’re aggressive players. And then we can also be very dynamic in the sense that when we come off the court, we’re very different.”

“The struggles that I faced made me feel like I actually have something I can offer other than just showing my talent and my skill,” Collins adds.

“When I got diagnosed with RA (rheumatoid arthritis) and endometriosis my perspective on privacy changed a little bit because I thought, ‘This is the career that I’ve chosen and this is what I’ve set out to do’. And with that comes some public responsibility and using your platform in a positive way.

“I still have some level of privacy but I’ve been very open about my health journey and I’m so glad that I have, because it’s offered me so much meaningful connection with not just my friends, but being able to connect with fans and people on a deeper level and for people to really understand who I really am.”

Collins has always been a fierce competitor, and at the Olympics in July that spirit led to a confrontation with the then world No. 1 Iga Swiatek. Collins, who had earlier hit Swiatek at the net with a passing shot, had to retire in the third set of their quarterfinal because of an injured stomach muscle caused by cramping and dehydration in her previous match against Camila Osorio. As she shook Swiatek’s hand, she told her opponent that, “She didn’t have to be insincere about my injury”, with Swiatek appearing bewildered by the interaction.

Collins then told reporters: “There’s a lot that happens on camera. And there are a lot of people with a ton of charisma (who) are one way on camera and another way in the locker room. I don’t need the fakeness.”

Looking back at the incident, Collins says: “I think what happened on the court is very much just like sometimes people have friction at work.”

She adds, laughing, “For most people, it’s not on the news.”

“I’m trying to be the best person that I can be, but that’s not to say that I don’t fall short of that. I could have taken a different approach and done some things differently. But we had a moment there on court.”

Have they spoken since? “She’s not someone that I really get to see a lot at the tennis and she’s very guarded with her group,” Collins says.

“We all make mistakes and fall short. And I’m just trying to put that behind me. I think when guys kind of get into a little tiff or a little bit of friction, I think that it’s kind of expected.

“With women, it becomes this way bigger issue than it really needs to be. There’s a lot of extrapolation.”

Danielle Collins and Iga Swiatek after their Olympic quarterfinal. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

Collins now has to rewire her brain after being all set for retirement. Does the prospect of being on the tour still in 2025 excite her? “I think each year offers something different and a different approach mentally as you grow and evolve,” she says.

“I’m in a much different place now with my tennis, my career, my life. I think getting back out there, you’re trying to get into the competing mode and trying to find that consistency with the physical parts — because I have taken a little bit of time off to address all of this stuff.

“That takes a lot of gas out of your tank.”

The fact that her first event back after more than two months out is a team event is a bonus. Collins, a veteran of college tennis where she displayed the same passion and defiance that has stood out on the WTA Tour, adores playing as part of a team, describing team competitions as “my pride and joy”. The atmosphere blends the competitive and more open elements of her personality better than any other, giving no quarter in matches while caring and providing for her Olympic teammates with gift packs including gold necklaces with Olympic rings on them.

“I wish we had the team tournaments more often, it’s just a totally different energy,” she says.

“From being on the team with the girls and competing to the little gifts that you prepare and all the festive stuff that you try to do. It’s really like a holiday in a lot of ways.”

Her emotions going into Malaga mirror the complexity of her character. There’s sadness at the circumstances of her decision not to retire, but excitement at what she can deliver from here on in.

“I think a lot of people would look at what I do on court and they would have no idea that I’ve gone through the physical struggles and chronic conditions that I suffer from,” she says.

“That’s a testament to a lot of the resilience that I have. But it’s also important to share vulnerability.

“I didn’t understand that originally. I think in the beginning of my career when I look back and reflect, I struggled a lot with being myself and I wasn’t really able to tap into that as much. Because I was so guarded and because I was so afraid sometimes put myself out there to share my story and journey.

“I guess as I’ve matured, I’ve settled into my skin a little bit more and just let you know that this is who I am.”

(Top photo: Kamran Jebreili / Associated Press)