Teenager Maya Joint is thriving in her new position as Australia’s top-ranked women’s tennis player, reaching yet another WTA quarterfinal at the Hong Kong Open.<\/p>\n
US-born Joint has enjoyed an extraordinary breakthrough year, winning two tournaments on her way to shooting up the rankings from 116 at the start of 2025 to a career high of 32.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old, seeded fifth in Hong Kong, defeated Slovakian qualifier Vikt\u00f3ria Morvayov\u00e1 in the last 16, winning 6-1, 6-4.<\/p>\n
The 70-minute triumph put Joint in her sixth tour-level quarterfinal of the season.<\/p>\n
Twice, she went on to win the tournament, in Rabat on clay and Eastbourne on grass.<\/p>\n
Joint faces either Japan’s Himeno Sakatsume or Hong Kong wildcard Eudice Chong in Friday’s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Last week, Joint became Australian number one by surpassing Daria Kasatkina, who has dropped to 38 on the WTA rankings.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Russia-born Kasatkina declared she was at “breaking point” and was giving the rest of the 2025 season a miss after the stress of switching her international allegiance.<\/p>\n
Former Australian number one Ajla Tomljanovi\u0107 was not so fortunate in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Tomljanovi\u0107, 86 on the WTA rankings, battled hard as she attempted a third-set comeback against seventh seed Sorana C\u00eerstea.<\/p>\n
But Romanian C\u00eerstea prevailed 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.<\/p>\n
In another WTA 250 event, the Chennai Open, it proved a productive day for the Australian challenge, with seventh seed Kim Birrrell, Arina Rodionova and Storm Hunter all progressing to the last 16.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenager Maya Joint is thriving in her new position as Australia’s top-ranked women’s tennis player, reaching yet another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,63023,31229,3410,85,747,26599],"class_list":["post-249555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hong-kong-open","tag-maya-joint","tag-rankings","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wta-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}