Maya Joint

Born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan to an Australian former-pro-squash father and a German mother, Maya Joint came to tennis sideways — she began playing in kindergarten at the local Michigan courts, hitting tennis balls with her father using a squash racquet. A dual U.S.-Australian citizen from birth, she chose her father's flag at 16, relocating to Brisbane in mid-2023 to train at Tennis Australia's National Academy. The climb was vertical: entering 2025, Joint's No. 116 ranking was an enormous leap from her 2023 year-end rank of No. 773.

A right-hander who builds points from the baseline, Joint leans on a heavy, flat ball-striking off both wings rather than a big serve — she averages just 1.5 aces per match. She's named hard courts as her natural surface but says she likes to slide on clay, and the 2025 offseason brought a deliberate stylistic pivot: trying to transition to the net more, becoming more of an all-court player, and adding slice and variation to her game. Double faults, an early-2025 leak, were the other emphasis. What fans warmed to is the temperament — a teenager who plays the opponent, not the ranking.

The 2025 breakthrough was real. After her first major win over Laura Siegemund at the 2024 US Open, Joint claimed her maiden tour title on clay in Rabat over Jaqueline Cristian, then five weeks later authored the season's signature run: at the Eastbourne Open, she beat Ons Jabeur, Emma Raducanu, Anna Blinkova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach the final, which she won over Alexandra Eala in three sets, saving four match points. A career-high No. 32 ranking and a rise to the highest-ranked Australian player marked the year.

Now ranked 53, Joint sits as the front of the Australian women's queue, carrying the all-court remodel into a full second tour season — with Wimbledon grass, where it all clicked, the surface she most has to prove was no fluke.