Danielle Collins won an emotional title, while Jannik Sinner won a logical one, at the Miami Open

There was something different about Danielle Collins on Saturday in Miami.

As always, the American showed us her fire. The max-volume screams of “Come on!” The commands to her coaches to “Stand up!” and “Talk to me!” The grunts that climb higher and higher as the points get more and more important. The brutal way she has of clubbing a crosscourt two-handed backhand. All of those fierce, traditional elements of the "Dan-yell" experience were in evidence as she tried to win her first WTA 1000 title at age 30, and complete her first Top 5 win in two years, over Elena Rybakina.

This time, though, that fire was accompanied by a different level of focus, patience, and purpose. You could see it at several crucial moments of the match, moments when she might normally have let her frustration get the best of her, or lost a little of her self-belief, or launched an especially wayward groundstroke missile.

Instead, when Collins found herself in trouble, she forced herself to calm down. After her errors, she moved onto the next point. She stayed upbeat. She played quickly and efficiently and always seemed to keep the finish line in her sights. She survived several long games that looked all but lost. She saved an amazing 10 of 11 break points.

“It’s a game of adjusting,” Collins said of her mentality during one of the biggest matches of her career. “I had to do that a lot during this match, and had to be open-minded and try to get a little creative. I did a good job of that.”

At 5-5 in the first set, the Florida native looked like she was going to be broken. She was hopping around between points, showing her anxiety. She was screaming at her box after her mistakes. She went down a break point, threw in a second serve, and was saved by an explicable return error from Rybakina. But Collins also saved herself on another break point by firing a backhand winner, and she held serve with a cross-court forehand pass that was punctuated by her highest-pitched shriek of the day.

After winning the first set, Collins had to do it all again in the second. Serving at 3-3, she hung in through 10 hectic minutes and three more break points. Then, serving for the title at 5-3, she had to fend off three break points, and forget about three squandered championship points.

“I told myself, ‘Just keep those emotions in the locker room, and then we can go and be emotional a little bit later.' “But it was hard to hold it in.” Danielle Collins

For me, the defining moment of her day came after she barely missed a backhand long on one of her match points. She had a little too much time to think about it, and she nervously lifted up just a little too much on her swing. When she heard the out call, she spun around and let out a full-throttle scream. But immediately after that, her eyes went calm again and you could see that she was thinking about the next point—with intention rather than anger or fear. A few minutes later, she was the champion.

“I told myself, ‘Just keep those emotions in the locker room, and then we can go and be emotional a little bit later,’” Collins said of how she handed the afternoon’s ups and downs. “But it was hard to hold it in.”

Collins, who will retire at the end of the season and has been sidelined by health problems in recent years, said she was lifted and driven by her home-state crowd.

“It’s just been amazing to go out today and to have felt the energy that I felt from the fans and literally feel like I’m playing in front of thousands of my best friends, that was just surreal.

“I’ll never forget this day because of that.”

Saturday’s final in Miami was emotional. Sunday’s was logical.

Jannik Sinner was a solid favorite to beat Grigor Dimitrov. The Italian started the week ranked nine spots higher (No. 3 to No. 12), and having won their last two matches. In the semifinals, he had put on one of the most convincing performances of his career in beating Daniil Medvedev 6-1, 6-2. The Russian walked off looking completely out of ideas for how challenge Sinner on hard courts that are as quick as these; the bigger he hit the ball, the bigger Sinner sent it back. It was tough to imagine Dimitrov succeeding where Medvedev had failed.

We can credit Dimitrov for trying. For taking the points to Sinner, for daring to go up the line with his backhand, for running around his forehand and coming forward when he could. But we can’t credit him for making any of it work.

The trouble started early, with Dimitrov serving at 2-2 in the first. When Dimitrov went down 0-30 with a drop-shot miss and a double fault, Sinner immediately came to life. He hit one forehand pass crosscourt for a winner, and another down the line for the break.

That was essentially it. Sinner broke again to win the first set, this time with a backhand pass. He broke at 1-2 in the second set with a heavy, deep forehand that Dimitrov couldn’t handle. And then he broke one more time at 4-1 to seal it.

Sinner only made 56 percent of his first serves, and he hit three fewer winners than Dimitrov (15 to 18). But he won 88 percent of those points on his first serve, and was six for six at net. And while his running passes were spectacular, he also showed a mastery of the subtler arts of tennis success. Serving at 4-3 in the first set, Sinner double faulted to make the score 30-30, then missed his next first serve. Here, it seemed, was a half-chance for Dimitrov. But Sinner shut it down right away. He upped the speed on his second serve, aimed it right at Dimitrov’s body, and drew an error on the return. Mini-crisis averted.

“I haven’t had so much time to adapt to this court,” said Sinner, who came to Miami after a semifinal run in Indian Wells. “As the tournament went on, I felt better and better. Today’s performance was really, really good.”

Sinner won his third title of 2024, and jumped over his young rival Carlos Alcaraz to reach a career-high No. 2 ranking. He might not be No. 1 yet, but with Djokovic’s sub-par start, Sinner has been the ATP’s player of the year so far.

If you put Sinner’s win in Miami, Alcaraz’s win in Indian Wells, and Djokovic’s dip in form together, you can see the ATP’s future—with the Spaniard and the Italian dueling at the top—come a little further into focus.