Maya Joint has made a mockery of the tennis rankings with an impressive display to uproot one of the top seeds at the Pan Pacific Open event in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Ranked a career-high 28 in February, the Australian’s ranking has dropped steadily throughout the year, and she entered this WTA 500 event ranked 94th.<\/p>\n
However, the American-born Aussie showed the numbers can’t always be trusted as she powered past sixth seed and world number 16 Sorana Cirstea of Romania.<\/p>\n
Joint’s impressive 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) victory yesterday secured her a spot in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
It also continued her recent resurgence, after she made the final at last month’s Korea Open in Seoul, where compatriot Kim Birrell claimed her first WTA title with a 6-4, 6-2 win in the final.<\/p>\n
Joint’s next opponent is Spanish world number 42 Cristina Bucsa, who beat France’s Diane Parry 7-5, 6-1 yesterday.<\/p>\n
And Joint isn’t the only in-form Australian still in the main draw.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Talia Gibson, who recently reached the Singapore final, came through an all-Australian affair over qualifier Daria Kasatkina 6-0, 7-5.<\/p>\n
Gibson powered through the first eight games in a row but was made to work hard to hold off the former world No.8 in the second set.<\/p>\n
Her reward is a round-of-16 clash with eight-seeded Aleandra Eala, of the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in the Guangzhou Open, Venus Williams lost 6-2, 6-2 to Austrian teenager Lilli Tagger to be 0-13 in singles this year. The 28-year age gap between Williams, 46, and Tagger, 18, is believed to be a record difference between opponents in a WTA Tour match.<\/p>\n
Williams created no break-point chances, and Tagger took four of the 16 she had.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maya Joint has made a mockery of the tennis rankings with an impressive display to uproot one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,31229,510271,85,747,11804,11549],"class_list":["post-943240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-maya-joint","tag-pan-pacific-open","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tokyo","tag-venus-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943240","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=943240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}