Who Is Maya Joint, the Australian Tennis Player Playing Against Serena Williams at Wimbledon?

3 min read

Maya Joint has had one of the more unusual paths to professional tennis. Born in Michigan to an Australian father and a German mother, she grew up hitting tennis balls with a squash racquet on local courts. After turning professional, Joint had visited Australia only once before making the move permanent in 2023.

Today, the 20-year-old plays on Centre Court against Serena Williams, who has 13 Wimbledon titles (seven in singles and six in doubles). Here, get to know Maya Joint:

She was born in Michigan but calls Australia home.

Joint was born and raised in Michigan. Her father, Mick, pursued a professional squash career that took him through Argentina, Canada, and Germany, where he met her mother, Katja, who competed in squash, tennis, and badminton. “Squash in Australia does not work the same as here in the [United] States,” Mick told Squash Magazine in 2010. “There isn’t an ‘NCAA’ so to speak. I left Australia when I was 19 to explore the world.”

The couple settled in Detroit two years before Maya was born. The entire family relocated to Australia in 2025 when Mick took a coaching role at the MCC Squash Club, and Maya had already permanently moved to Melbourne for training.

Her introduction to tennis involved a squash racquet.

Joint started hitting tennis balls with her father on local Michigan courts during kindergarten, using a squash racquet rather than a tennis one. She grew up holding dual citizenship in Australia and the United States from birth and began competing on the ITF junior circuit while still a teenager.

She chose Australia over the United States at age 16.Graham Denholm//Getty Images

Joint receives the Female Junior Athlete of the Year award during the 2024 Newcombe Medal/Australian Tennis Awards.

After showing promise on the junior circuit, Joint began weighing which country to represent internationally at 15. A year later, in mid-2023, she officially decided to represent her father’s homeland and relocated to Brisbane to train at Tennis Australia’s National Academy in Queensland alongside established players including Kim Birrell and Ajla Tomljanović. “She’s quite introverted but the more time you spend with her she’s very quirky, she’s funny,” Tomljanović told reporters before Wimbledon 2026. “She’s very professional. She likes to stay in her bubble with her team.”

She walked away from a college scholarship.

In November 2023, Joint committed to the Texas Longhorns tennis program. The following August, she was required to forfeit $140,000 in U.S. Open prize money to maintain NCAA eligibility, a ruling that drew widespread criticism, including from former U.S. Open champion Andy Roddick, who called it “absurd.” In December 2024, she announced she was turning professional and giving up her college opportunity.

“It was definitely a bit scary in the beginning, just because it was so far away and I’d never been here before, but it’s been a nice decision,” Maya told Australia’s Nine Network last year. “Australia is amazing. All the people here are wonderful, and I wouldn’t have made it to where I am without moving here. I just improved so much when I got here. I got proper training. I got a gym program. I got a nutritionist and a mental coach—just everything that I didn’t really have. So, when I got all of it at once, it kind of just skyrocketed my game.”

She made history as the youngest Australian to win a WTA 1000 match.Clive Brunskill//Getty Images

Joint serves against Emma Navarro of United States in the second round of the 2025 Madrid Open.

In May 2025 at the Madrid Open, Joint became the youngest Australian to win a match at a WTA 1000 event, breaking a record previously held by Ash Barty. That same month, she won her first WTA Tour singles title at the Morocco Open and followed it by claiming the doubles title at the same tournament, rising to a career-high ranking of world No. 53 in singles.

She reached a career-high ranking of No. 28 in early 2026.Lintao Zhang//Getty Images

Joint playing against Tereza Valentova of the Czech Republic in the first round of the 2026 Australian Open.

Joint entered 2026 as one of Australia’s most watched players, becoming the first Australian seed at the Australian Open since Barty in 2022. “Exciting for Maya to be seeded at a slam for the first time, particularly at home in Australia,” Barty told reporters before the 2026 Australian Open. “A testament to her hard work, professionalism and consistency over the past 12 months. I love watching her play and can’t wait to see her in Melbourne.”

She reached her career-high singles ranking of No. 28 in February 2026 and won her first WTA 500 doubles title in Abu Dhabi that same month, partnering with Ekaterina Alexandrova. She has since experienced a difficult stretch of singles results, losing 11 consecutive WTA Tour singles matches and dropping out of the top 80.

Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.