During her opening-round match at the Cincinnati Open against Taylor Townsend on Friday, Danielle Collins left fans collectively scratching their heads after a mid-match outburst.
In the second set, with Townsend up 2-0 in a tiebreak that could potentially win her the match, Collins turned to her player box and began screaming in a tone that left fans and spectators both confused and concerned.
Although it’s hard to make out exactly what the former world No. 7 said, at one point, she can be heard shouting:
“Why is this happening?”
After losing the tiebreak 7-2, Collins then proceeded to exit the court after shaking hands with her opponent, leaving behind all of her belongings, much like former ATP world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev did after his Mubadala Citi DC Open loss to Corentin Moutet last month.
Reporter Andrew Jerell Jones shared footage of the moment via social media, as seen below:
In a show of good sportsmanship, Taylor Townsend grabbed the WTA vet’s bag and handed it off to her team as seen below:
While Collins played well at times, logging seven Aces to Townsend’s two, the unforced errors and the double faults continued to pile up for the 2024 Miami Open winner too.
On the flip side, Townsend played a consistent match, appearing to be a step ahead of Collins, winning 71% of her first-serve points.
Looking at Danielle Collins’ Disappointing 2025 Season
At the start of the 2025 season, Danielle Collins was sitting just outside of the WTA top-10 after a big Masters 1000 win in Miami last year.
Since the start of the season, however, her ranking has continued to fall.
In early April, her ranking dipped to 40, before then eventually falling to 54 in late May. While it appeared as though Collins’ ranking has found the floor, she then dropped to No. 66 after failing to defend fourth-round points from Wimbledon 2024.
After an early exit in DC late last month, a Round of 64 exit in Montreal, and a first-round exit in Cincinnati, Collins now heads into the US Open at No. 58 on the WTA live rankings.
Taylor Townsend’s Impressive 2025 Run Continues Following Concussion
After a tough start to the 2025 season that saw Taylor Townsend suffer first-round exits at the Australian Open and the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open, Townsend then failed to make it out of the qualifying rounds in Doha, Dubai, and Indian Wells.
Then, at the Miami Open, things seemed to click for the American as she fought through qualifiers and played her way into the Round of 32, where she lost to Olympic gold medalist Qinwen Zheng.
Days later, during her quarterfinal doubles match with Katerina Siniakova against Storm Hunter and Caroline Dolehide, Townsend suffered a concussion that left her with lingering symptoms for nearly two full weeks.
As she explained back in May during an interview with RolandGarros.com:
“When I settled, and normalised outside of the tennis world, I was just like, ‘Whoa. I definitely don’t feel normal,’” she said, recalling symptoms that required restful isolation in order to re-set her body.
“Light sensitivity, dizziness, blurry vision. That lasted for almost ten days – I would have headaches all day long, they would be in different places, behind my eyes and my neck, and I also had whiplash, so my neck and my cervical spine was all screwed up. I couldn’t turn my head.”
Now back to 100%, Townsend is eager to close out the 2025 season strong.
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