Joint, who soared up the rankings in 2025 with two WTA titles, is eyeing an all-important seeding at the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n
“[It was] such a classy fighting effort, and gritty. We spoke about it, we just have to compete. That’s exactly what Maya did,” Australia’s stand-in skipper Nicole Pratt said.<\/p>\n
“[She] didn’t play her best tennis in the first set but it is all part of experience and learning.<\/p>\n
“The more she is in these situations, the better and better she is going to be. It’s all new territory.”<\/p>\n
Joint won three games straight to win the second set and further found her radar to pull away to a 5-0 lead in the third.<\/p>\n
She’ll team up with Australia’s top-ranked man Alex de Minaur at the United Cup in January in the lead-up to the first grand slam of the year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maya Joint, 19, has had a great 2025 season and is tipped for even better in 2026. (AAP Image: Chris Kidd)<\/p>\n
Pratt said Joint was “like a sponge” and believed an even bigger season could be on the cards.<\/p>\n
“She takes on information and filters the stuff that isn’t so good,” Pratt said.<\/p>\n
“[She’s] got a great team \u2026 2026 might be even better than 2025.”<\/p>\n
Stream End Game with Tony Armstrong on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n Tony Armstrong tackles Australia’s overdue reckoning with racism in sport with the help of some of its biggest sports stars.<\/p>\n Earlier, world number 95 Birrell was down 3-1 against Nan\u00e1 before reeling off five of the next six games to take the first set.<\/p>\n The pair exchanged breaks early in the second, with world number 672 Nan\u00e1 coming to life with some scintillating returns to get to 5-3 before closing the set out.<\/p>\n Birrell got back in the groove to run away with the deciding set.<\/p>\n Nan\u00e1 claimed her maiden top-level tour match win in September, becoming the first WTA player born in the 2010s to do so.<\/p>\n “I knew it was going to be a battle and I was going to have to keep my nerve,” Birrell said.<\/p>\n “She’s a great player. I’m sure she’s going to have a big future.<\/p>\n “She played quite fearless on some big points, particularly toward the end of the second set.”<\/p>\n Australia was runner-up in 2019 and 2022 in the Billie Jean King Cup and has not won the team event since 1974 when it was known as the Fed Cup.<\/p>\n AAP<\/p>\n ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fighting qualities of teenager Maya Joint have earned high praise from a tennis stalwart after the 19-year-old’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,38306,163922,71955,31229,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-289097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-billie-jean-king-cup","11":"tag-bjk-cup","12":"tag-kim-birrell","13":"tag-maya-joint","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289097","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=289097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n