Madrid (Spain) – Danielle Collins’ long unbeaten run on the circuit gained another chapter this Friday. After winning the titles in Miami and Charleston, the American scored her 14th consecutive victory. She overcame the Serbian qualifier Olga Danilovic, 122nd in the ranking, with splits of 4/6, 6/4 and 7/6 (10-8) in 2h44 of the match.
Collins is unbeaten since her match against world No. 1 Iga Swiatek in Indian Wells. The 30-year-old North American currently appears in 15th place in the ranking. Her career best is seventh place, achieved in 2022, the year she was a finalist at the Australian Open. Her next opponent will be the Romanian Jacqueline Cristian73rd in the rankings, who earlier eliminated Czech Barbora Krejcikova by 2/6, 6/0 and 6/2.
Danilovic was coming off a great comeback in his debut. The 23-year-old Serbian girl saved four match-points in the match against Frenchwoman Clara Burel last Wednesday. And she almost did it again in the second round, as she saved another five against Collins, before the American closed the game on her sixth opportunity. The best ranking of the Serbian’s career is 93rd, in June of last year.
Collins experienced fluctuations in his service games during the first set. She made four aces and four double faults and ended up facing break points in three different games. Danilovic got an early break to make it 3/2, conceded the draw, but regained the advantage afterwards and no longer had his serve threatened until the end of the set.
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Right at the opening of the second set, Danilovic broke again and won 2/0. The Serbian came to lead 3/1, when the North American escaped two break-points, fitting in a sequence of good first serves, and soon after returning the break. Collins’ service was threatened again at 4/4, but survived and broke again in the last game of the end.
Danilovic served for the game, but had no match point
The third set began with dominance from the servers, who continued without breaks for eight games. And until then, Danilovic had faced the only break-point of the partial. The Serbian managed a break to make it 5/4 after a sequence of good returns, attacking the parallels with her forehand. But she didn’t take advantage of the chance to serve for the game and Collins went for the equalizer.
The definition was for a balanced tiebreak, in which Collins started ahead, betting on his aggressive game and a lot of power in his strikes. The North American led 5-2, but took a while to close the match. She needed six match-points to consolidate the turnaround. Collins led the winners statistics 35 to 31 and made 39 errors against 27. Each player managed four breaks and won 108 points in total.
