Who Is Danielle Collins’ Coach in 2022?

Last Updated on June 28, 2022

Danielle Rose Collins was born on the 13^th of December 1993 in St Petersburg Florida. The 28-year-old all-American tennis player has already made quite the impact on the women’s tennis scene reaching a career-high ranking of No. 8 in singles and world No. 86 in doubles. She has been reported as having a highly aggressive playing style that has been described as “fearless”, “ferocious” and “fun to watch”.

Since childhood, she’s had a keen interest in sports, which her parents, Walter and Kathy Collins have encouraged. She started playing tennis at age 3, introduced to the sport by her dad who played recreationally and used to coach her. She graduated from Northeast High School in 2012, noting that during this time her passion for the sport ignited. As a high school player, her junior ranking was good enough to get her a scholarship from the University of Florida majoring in Liberal Arts and Sciences during her freshman year. After one year at UOF, Collins transferred to the University of Virginia. It was here that she won the collegiate national title in 2014 and 2016, additionally receiving the Honda Sports Award as the nation’s best female tennis player in 2016. Collins graduated from UVA with a bachelor’s degree in media studies and business in 2016.

Collins began her career on the ITF Women’s Circuit in 2009 where she earned her first ITF singles title in 2011. At the 2014 US Open, she made her WTA Tour main-draw debut. She became a full-time professional in 2016 after she had finished her studies, winning four ITF singles titles. Collins had not made her professional tennis debut until the age of 22. This is particularly uncommon for many players on the tennis scene, where the average age of turning pro is usually under 20 years.

Undoubtedly her breakthrough year came in 2018. She earned her place in the world top 50 for the first time with the biggest victory of her career when she took victory over the former world No. 1 and seven-time Grand Slam champion, Venus Williams. Who also happened to be Collin’s idol.  This made Colins the first-ever qualifier to reach the semi-finals at the Miami Open. After making it to the quarterfinals in Monterrey on April 9th, Collins broke into the top 50 for the first time. It was in late 2018 that Collins was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Collins continued her successful career over the next three years; however, this came to a devastating halt in April 2021. Collins’s health became progressively worse as she was suffering from an extremely painful condition called endometriosis. Where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. After a remarkable recovery and extensive training, Collins picked up her game in the second half of the season, winning her first WTA title at the Palermo Ladies Open, and second at the Silicon Valley Classic making her grand return to the top 30 at world No. 28, on August 9^th. 2022 brought Collins her First Grand Slam final, top 10 debuts, and the American No. 1 title. There’s a lot more to come from this fearless player.

Current Coach is Nicolas Almagro:

Collins’s current coach is Nicolas Almagro. Born in Murcia Spain on the 21^st of August 1985, the former tennis pro has won 13 titles in singles and has reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open and the French Open. His career-high ranking in singles is No.9. He hung up his boots in 2019 when he retired from his professional career due to a recurring knee injury.

The pair were introduced to one another through Serena Williams coach Patrick Mouratoglou. The pair started working together in 2020 just before the French Open where Collins managed to reach the quarterfinals. What was to initially be just a temporary coach/player relationship, turned into a more permanent role following Collins’s huge improvements to her game. It was under Almagro’s guidance that she won her first WTA title in 2021 and has been a consistent performer at Grand Slams.

Also Read:

• Danielle Collins Net Worth

Other specialists in Collins team:

Collins’s long-term partner is the Australian football player Thomas Couch who played for the TSL North Launceston team until 2013. He now works as a physical performance manager, working closely with Collins since 2019.

Previous Coaches

Jay Gooding

Collins played at the World Team Tennis association until 2020 when she was dismissed due to breaking coronavirus protocols by leaving the Greenbrier Resort and the state of West Virginia. Collins has stated she left for medical reasons associated with her arthritis.

During her time here she learned a great deal from some highly skilled coaches. One of which being Jay Gooding, who coached her in the Orlando Storm team. Born on the 13^th of May 1976 in Melbourne, Gooding has had a fruitful professional and coaching career.

Gooding started playing tennis at the age of nine, turning professional by 1998. He qualified for this first ATP tournament in Scottsdale in March 2003 where he lost to James Blake in the first round. He has the best singles ranking in the world 448 and won five ITF Futures titles in doubles.

At the start of Gooding’s coaching career, he co-founded Gooding Todero Academy with Jode Todero. He then went on to coach Louisa Chirico, working together to attain a career-high of world no 58.

It was after this that he went on to become head coach of the Orlando Storm Team, in which he met Dannielle Collins. This player, coach relationship had to come to an end due to Collins’s unfortunate dismissal from World Team Tennis.

Mark Guilbeau

Collin’s head coach at UVA was Mark Guilbeau, who she still talks to regularly and gives a huge amount of credit to for her success. Guilbeau had a very successful coaching career at UVA, with a 201-117 record as the head coach, leading the school to back-to-back ACC Championships in 2014 and 2015. Guilbeau also lead the Cavaliers to 10 NCAA tournament appearances, reaching the NCAA Quarterfinals in 2014 and 2016.

Collins was undoubtedly one of Guilbeau’s highest successes of his coaching career to date, leading her to win the NCAA singles title in 2014 and 2016 while being an NCAA All-American for three years.

Their training came to an end once Collins graduated from UVA and Guilbeau retired after 12 seasons.