Wimbledon star dating man she met in London coffee shop after suffering early exit

A tennis player who was knocked out of Wimbledon in the early rounds is dating a man she met in a London coffee shop. Danielle Collins was beaten by Iga Swiatek in round three, ending her hopes of securing glory at SW19 for the first time. She has never gone past the fourth round in singles, but reached the semi-finals of the women's doubles event in 2022.

Collins enjoyed her best run at Wimbledon last year, reaching the second week before she was dumped out by eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova. She has suffered plenty of disappointment at the All England Club, having played at Wimbledon on eight occasions. However, her defeat to Krejcikova came with a huge silver lining.

Shortly after losing the match, Collins went to a nearby coffee shop before heading back to the United States. She ended up meeting Bryan Kipp, a former college athlete, and they began dating soon afterwards.

The happy couple are still going strong and Kipp was spotted watching Collins at the recent Charleston Open, where she reached the quarter-finals before losing at the hands of Jessica Pegula.

During the tournament, Collins opened up on their chance encounter in London in a candid interview with Tennis Channel.

She said: "He's had a really busy work week. We have been going out for a while now. We met at a coffee shop in London so that was pretty exciting. I didn't think I would meet someone at a coffee shop.

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"Who would have thought? Just after the tournament, Wimbledon. He didn't know anything about tennis, and he didn't know I was a tennis player, which was really nice.

"He was actually a bigger fan of golf and so he said, 'Well I really like golf. I don't really know much about tennis'. And I was like, 'Yes! That's so exciting'.

"It's fun to kind of be around someone that has interests in other things and that's not as familiar with the sport because you get to learn and grow with them and help them."

Collins has enjoyed learning about Kipp's passion for golf, but the 31-year-old also wants to teach him a thing or two about tennis.

"We haven't had a lot of time on the court for me to teach him because we just don't find enough time cause we're doing golf and he's also at my matches a lot and he's working," she explained.

"But in the future, I'm hoping we'll play like the husband-wife doubles. I explained to him that this is a big deal in the tennis world so hopefully that doesn't tear us apart.

"He is very competitive. He was a football player at Columbia. Very smart, engineer major. So, I'm more kind of like the jock in the relationship, and he's definitely more of the cerebral one."

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