{"id":761673,"date":"2026-06-26T14:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/761673\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T14:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:05:09","slug":"wimbledon-2026-serena-williams-to-face-australias-maya-joint-in-first-round-of-tennis-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/761673\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon 2026: Serena Williams to face Australia\u2019s Maya Joint in first round of tennis comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australia\u2019s Maya Joint has been handed the honour of facing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/link\/follow-20180101-p602zo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the great Serena Williams<\/a> in her Wimbledon comeback match, presenting the struggling Queensland player with a golden opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>The 20-year-old has been drawn to play the 44-year-old seven-time champion in the first round on the Championships\u2019 second day on Tuesday &#8211; and even after a woeful season, the US-born, Queensland-based Joint must be a big favourite to beat a mum-of-two who\u2019s more than twice her age.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"_137dbe642694dac0-source\">AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Maya Joint has been handed the honour of facing the great Serena Williams in her Wimbledon comeback&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-761673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761673","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=761673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}