Caroline Dolehide ended Danielle Collins’ Grand Slam singles career with a U.S. Open first-round upset.
Dolehide, a 25-year-old ranked 49th, prevailed 1-6, 7-5, 6-4 over the 11th seed Collins on Tuesday.
Dolehide earned her first U.S. Open main draw match win in her fifth appearance. Collins is the highest-ranked player she has ever beaten.
She gets 96th-ranked Italian Sara Errani in the second round on Thursday.
U.S. OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Order of Play
Collins, 30, announced after she was eliminated from the Australian Open in January that this would be her last season on tour.
“I have other things that I’d kind of like to accomplish in my life outside of tennis, and would like to be able to kind of be able to have the time to be able to do that,” she said then. “Obviously having kids is a big priority for me.”
After that announcement, Collins earned the biggest tournament title of her career in Miami in March and qualified for the four-woman U.S. Olympic singles team.
She had the deepest run of any U.S. woman in Paris, reaching the quarterfinals. Collins said that during the Olympics she suffered a heat stroke and strained her rectus abdominis, a similar injury she had years earlier that kept her out more than four months.
“My timing was a bit off, and stamina and this and that,” she said of Tuesday’s loss. “You know, it’s to be expected. I went through a lot at Olympics with the heat stroke. I got really sick after. You know, I’m immunocompromised. I felt like that played a little bit of a role. I’ve just been really physically challenged the last couple of weeks even just with the time off. I feel like I still haven’t physically completely recovered.”
Collins won NCAA titles for Virginia in 2014 and 2016, then made the Australian Open semifinals in 2019 and final in 2022. She reached a career-high ranking of seven in 2022.
She said Tuesday that she requested not to have an on-court presentation, adding that she still plans to play the U.S. Open doubles.
“I’m not somebody that likes to celebrate my accomplishments,” she said. “I’ve struggled with feeling guilt around success, and that’s something I have had to work on. So I’m not great, honestly, at having an all-about-me moment. I just would prefer to do something like that maybe in private. But I feel like I’ve gotten enough attention to last a lifetime.”
Also Tuesday, two-time U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka swept No. 10 Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-2 for her first top-10 win since January 2020. Osaka had nine winners and zero unforced errors in the first set.
Osaka, who had daughter Shai in July 2023, gets 2023 French Open runner-up Karolina Muchova on Thursday.
“I was trying not to cry when I was walking out,” Osaka said on court. “I remember last year I was watching Coco (Gauff) play, and I so badly wanted to step on these courts again, and I didn’t know if I could. I didn’t know athletically, physically what I was able to and just to win this match and just to be in this atmosphere means so much to me.”
Top-ranked Iga Swiatek defeated 104th-ranked Russian Kamilla Rakhimova 6-4, 7-6 (6).
Swiatek made 41 unforced errors to 30 winners and lost the most games in a first-round major match since her only defeat in the first round at 2019 Wimbledon.
Swiatek plays 217th-ranked Ena Shibahara on Thursday.
In the men’s draw, 86th-ranked Thanasi Kokkinakis upset No. 11 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
Tsitsipas, a six-time Grand Slam semifinalist, has never made it past the third round of the U.S. Open.
