Maya Joint Upsets Williams Sisters Again in US Open
The lights were up, the stadium full, and the script seemed written for a Williams sisters celebration. Instead, Arthur Ashe Stadium watched another chapter in the late-career heartbreak of Serena and Venus, authored once more by Australian Maya Joint.
Joint, partnering with Hao-Ching Chan, sent the legendary pair out of the US Open women’s doubles in the first round with a 6-3, 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (10/7) victory that swung wildly, then brutally, away from the sisters.
This was no ordinary doubles match. A first-round encounter placed in the night session on Ashe — a stage usually reserved for marquee singles — underlined what this occasion meant. A grand slam doubles return years in the making. A pair who once owned this court. A crowd desperate for one more run.
Instead, it got a collapse that will sting.
From 0–5 Down to the Unthinkable
After splitting the first two sets, Joint and Chan had already shown they were not overawed. They had taken the opening set 6-3, then absorbed the Williams fightback when Serena and Venus edged a tense second-set tiebreak 8-6.
The third set looked like a changing-of-the-guard statement. Joint and Chan surged to a 4-1 lead, controlling the rallies and dragging the sisters into uncomfortable positions. Yet the Williams name still carries defiance. They clawed back, feeding off the noise, the history, the muscle memory of a thousand big points.
That resistance peaked in the match tiebreak.
Serena and Venus raced to a 5-0 lead in the first-to-10 decider, the stadium roaring as if the years had rolled back. At 5-0, the comeback narrative felt inevitable. The sisters, back in New York, where they had lifted the US Open doubles trophy in 1999 and 2009, seemed ready to script one more escape.
Then the tension crept in.
Both sisters double-faulted. The errors cracked open the door, and Joint and Chan stormed through it, winning 10 of the final 12 points. What looked like a farewell flourish for the Williams team turned into a ruthless, nerveless finish from the outsiders.
Another Slam, Another Spoiler
For Joint, this was not a one-off ambush. It was the second straight major in which she has disrupted Serena’s story.
At Wimbledon earlier this year, Joint had already played the spoiler, knocking Serena out in the first round of the ladies’ singles on Centre Court. Now, under the lights of Ashe, she returned to deny Serena and Venus a winning doubles reunion at a grand slam.
The Williams sisters had planned that reunion earlier. They were supposed to play together again at Wimbledon, only for Serena’s knee injury to force a withdrawal and push back their return to the big stage. New York became the setting instead — a city where they had compiled a 27-8 record in 10 doubles appearances and once seemed untouchable.
This time, there was no title run. Just a raw, narrow defeat that echoed another recent loss: a match tiebreak exit at the Cincinnati Open.
A Giant Legacy, A Brutal Present
For two decades, Serena and Venus were a force of nature in women’s doubles. Fourteen grand slam titles together. Olympic gold medals in 2000, 2008 and 2012. A shared stint at world No. 1 in doubles. Their partnership reshaped what power, aggression and intimidation looked like in the format.
All of that history hovered over Ashe as they battled to stay alive. The crowd knew what it was watching: not just a match, but the remnants of an era.
It once looked as though that era had already closed. A first-round loss in 2022 was widely seen as their final act as a doubles team, especially when Serena stepped away from tennis later that year, her 23 grand slam singles titles already etched into the sport’s bedrock.
Her return this summer reopened the door, if only slightly. Two tournaments with Venus, two defeats in match tiebreaks. The margins small, the emotional weight enormous.
Venus, too, has felt the harshness of this phase. She exited the singles draw here in the first round, another reminder that time does not bargain, even with icons.
So the Williams sisters walked off Ashe again, this time beaten from a 5-0 lead in the deciding breaker, their comeback drowned out by a younger pairing’s nerve.
The numbers will say it was just a first-round loss. The scene said something else: the game is moving on, even when the crowd still isn’t ready to.
