MIAMI:
American Danielle Collins overturned the odds to win the Miami Open title on Saturday, beating Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina 7-5, 6-3 to claim her first WTA 1000 title in her final season on tour.
The 30-year-old Collins, world number 53, is the lowest-ranked woman ever to win the tournament, capturing the biggest title of her career in a two-hour triumph.
Collins announced in January that she would retire from the sport at the end of this year and her surprise run to the final and victory over the world number four delighted the home crowd.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to win my first title in the 1000. It means the world to me,” Collins said.
“The encouragement and support I got, it was hard to hide the emotion because I think these are the moments we live for and we can’t always have them. It was really special,” he said.
While she insists her recent run will not prompt her to reconsider her retirement from the sport, Collins will rise to 22nd in Monday’s WTA rankings.
It was a disappointing second consecutive loss in a Miami final for Rybakina, who lost to Petra Kvitova last year.
Both players looked strong on their serves in the early exchanges, but Florida Collins had to work harder to hold her serve.
He saved four break points as he held for 4-3 and again showed resistance to deny a break point at 5-5 with a superb backhand winner after a long rally.
Collins broke at the end of the first set, taking advantage of a third break point to win the set when Rybakina went wide.
The momentum then shifted heavily in Collins’ direction when she broke Rybakina’s first service game in the second set.
The 24-year-old Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, responded at the first opportunity.
Neither player could really dominate, but Collins struck the decisive blow when she broke for 5-3 as a full baseline Rybakina went wide.
The American had not beaten a top-five player since beating world number two Paula Badosa in San Diego in October 2022.
It was perhaps inevitable then that Collins showed nerves in the end as she struggled to serve out, denying two break points and eventually winning her fourth championship point.
“It’s tough,” Collins said. “You have the crowd rooting for you and pushing you to close it out and they wanted me to win so bad. It was like playing in front of my best friends and I didn’t want to let people down and it was hard.
“Elena doesn’t give up and she just kept hitting those shots left and right, I just had to hang in there.”
Rybakina had missed Indian Wells due to a gastrointestinal illness and said that with four of her five matches in Miami en route to the final having gone to three sets, she was not in top shape.
“I was feeling the body, of course. Also, it was not an easy tournament, because the first matches I was playing quite late, I would finish and then go to sleep around 2:00, 3:00. Then some matches were During the day. So the schedule has also been up and down, and the recovery, it doesn’t help, for sure,” he said.
Collins becomes the first American to win the Miami Open title since Sloane Stephens in 2018 and sixth overall.
The previous lowest-ranked women’s champion was Kim Clijsters, who was 38th when she won the title in 2005.
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