Tension erupts in Iga Swiatek-Danielle Collins Olympic tennis match

Women’s tennis world No. 1 Iga Swiatek took her Olympic quarterfinal Wednesday against Danielle Collins, but not before taking a ball to the midsection and later, some personal criticism from the American veteran who was forced to retire from the match. “I don’t need the fakeness,” Collins, 30, said of Swiatek shortly after she cited an injury in calling an end to their match midway through the third set. That gave Swiatek, the top seed in Paris, a 6-2, 1-6, 4-1 victory.

Collins also shared with reporters some unhappy comments about tournament officials, whom she accused of “not having adequate water on court” the day before, when she labored through sweltering conditions to notch a three-set win over Colombia’s Camila Osorio. She said she suffered a “heat stroke,” collapsed and had “full body convulsions” after that match, which she indicated contributed to a pulled muscle in her stomach on Wednesday.

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Swiatek, a 23-year-old from Poland whose five major titles include four on the Roland Garros clay where she and Collins squared off, also had reason on Wednesday feel some pain in her stomach. Early in the first set, with Swiatek at the middle of the net, Collins hit a backhand from where she was positioned just inside the middle of the baseline. The shot flew directly at Swiatek, who could not get out of the way in time and dropped to the court after being struck. While she was being attended to by trainers, Collins came over to check on Swiatek before play resumed.

“I couldn’t breathe for some time,” Swiatek said afterward. “I guess with the adrenaline that you have on court, you don’t feel these kind of things too hard, so I could get back in the game really quickly.”

There was no indication that Collins acted with animosity, but she later showed evident frustration with Swiatek. During one subsequent point, Collins was preparing to serve when Swiatek straightened her body and held her racket upward in a sign that she wasn’t ready.

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“There’s, like, no one behind me,” Collins could be heard saying to Swiatek, who has been accused in the past of gamesmanship. “Play at the server’s pace.”

When the match ended, Collins headed to the other side of the court, clasped Swiatek’s hand and made a lengthy comment. Collins then pulled away abruptly and walked off while Swiatek took a moment before reacting.

Collins said in January that this would be her final year on the WTA tour, and in May she elaborated in an essay on her desire to start a family. Noting the difficulty in potentially trying to juggle the challenges of pregnancy with an ongoing tennis career, Collins added that she has rheumatoid arthritis and endometriosis, chronic health conditions which she wrote “can affect fertility and your ability to have children.”

Asked afterward what Collins said to her, Swiatek replied, “I think it’s better to ask her. I would rather not get into these because that’s her last year on tour. I haven’t had a chance actually to tell her that, you know, she had a great journey and she really played well. So, I want to give her all the respect possible.”

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More recently, Collins said she wants to “go out really playing on a high level,” and the former University of Virginia standout has spent much of the year accomplishing that goal. Two of her four career titles on the top women’s tour have come this season, including in March at the Miami Open, where she won her first WTA 1000 tournament. Collins proceeded to also win the tour’s next event, staged in Charleston, S.C.

At No. 9 in the world when she arrived in Paris, Collins was one of three American women ranked in the top 10, along with No. 2 Coco Gauff and sixth-ranked Jessica Pegula, with 15-ranked Emma Navarro rounding out the American women’s squad. Collins’s loss Wednesday meant that all four had been bounced from the Olympic singles competition, and she wasn’t the only member of her squad to lose in an unhappy fashion.

Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion and an American flag-bearer at the Opening Ceremonies in Paris, grew visibly emotional on Tuesday when she argued with a chair umpire’s call late in what would turn into a 7-6 (7), 6-2 loss to Croatia’s Donna Vekic. Gauff, 20, referred to previous issues with officiating at Roland Garros — including in a semifinals loss to Swiatek in June — when she was heard lamenting on the court that it “always happens here at the French Open to me.”

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Navarro also had a testy post-match moment with her opponent. Following a three-set loss Tuesday to China’s Zheng Qinwen, the 23-year-old Navarro held on to their handshake for a few extra beats as she spoke to the world’s seventh-ranked player.

Asked at a subsequent news conference what she said, Navarro replied, “I just told her I didn’t respect her as a competitor.”

“I think she goes about things in a pretty cutthroat way,” Navarro added of Zheng. “It makes for a locker room that doesn’t have a lot of camaraderie, so it’s tough to face an opponent like that, who I really don’t respect.”

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