Maya Joint Defeats Williams Sisters in US Open Doubles

Under the lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium, in a night-session slot usually reserved for the sport’s biggest solo acts, Serena and Venus Williams walked out together again. The soundtrack was familiar: a packed house, a partisan roar, a sense that New York might script one more chapter for the most decorated doubles team of their era.

Instead, it became Maya Joint’s stage. Again.

The Australian, who sent Serena out of Wimbledon in the first round of singles earlier this year, teamed with Hao-Ching Chan to knock the sisters out of the US Open women’s doubles in a wild, momentum-swinging contest: 6-3, 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (10/7).

It was not just the result. It was the way it happened.

Joint and Chan led 4-1 in the deciding set and looked ready to close the door. The Williams sisters, as they have done for more than two decades, refused to accept the script. They clawed back, tightened their returns, fed off the crowd and dragged the match into a first-to-10 match tiebreak.

Then came the moment that felt like a throwback. Serena and Venus surged to a 5-0 lead in the breaker, the stadium rising with every point. A dream comeback, under the New York lights, with the sisters together again at a major — it all seemed to be aligning.

The pressure flipped.

Both sisters double-faulted during the run-in. Joint and Chan, suddenly liberated, began to swing freely and found their range. Point by point, they erased the deficit, winning 10 of the final 12 points to rip the match away and silence a crowd that had been ready to celebrate a classic Williams escape.

For Joint, it was a second straight Grand Slam where she played the spoiler against Serena. At Wimbledon, she had sent the 23-time major singles champion out of the ladies’ singles on Centre Court in the opening round. Now, on the biggest tennis stadium in the world, she returned to disrupt a doubles reunion many had circled as one of the stories of the US Open.

This reunion had already been delayed. Serena and Venus had planned their Grand Slam doubles return at Wimbledon, only for Serena’s knee injury to force a withdrawal. New York became the stage instead, a city where they have twice lifted the women’s doubles trophy, in 1999 and 2009, and where they entered this match with a 27-7 record across nine previous appearances as a team.

Their résumé together remains staggering: 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, Olympic gold medals in 2000, 2008 and 2012, and a shared run as world No. 1 in women’s doubles for eight weeks. For years, they did not just win; they dominated, often turning finals into processions.

That is why this occasion was treated as something far more than a routine first-round doubles match. Arthur Ashe Stadium rarely hands a night-session slot to an opening-round doubles contest. The sisters earned that exception through decades of work, and the crowd responded in kind, turning the arena into a celebration of a partnership that changed the sport.

The match, though, refused to follow the script of a nostalgic victory lap.

Joint and Chan struck first, taking the opening set 6-3 with aggressive returning and sharp net play. The Williams sisters, rusty as a pair at this level after years apart, needed time to find their rhythm. When they did, the contest shifted. The second set tightened into a tiebreak, and this time the Americans held firm, edging it 8-6 to force a decider and ignite the stadium.

Just when Joint and Chan looked to have steadied again in the third, building that 4-1 advantage, the sisters launched one more surge. They dragged the set back on serve, forced the match tiebreak, and then raced away in it. At 5-0, with the crowd in full voice, it felt like the old days.

It ended with a very modern reality: narrow margins, match tiebreaks, and the unforgiving nature of a comeback that stalls one point too soon.

For Serena, this was another painful doubles exit alongside Venus after her much-discussed return. The last time they played a major together, at the US Open in 2022, they also lost in the first round. She stepped away from tennis later that year, seemingly closing the book on a career that produced those 23 Grand Slam singles titles and a dynasty in doubles with her sister.

Her comeback this summer has already delivered two knife-edge defeats with Venus, both in match tiebreaks — first at the Cincinnati Open, now in New York. Venus, too, is searching for answers after a first-round singles loss at these championships.

The numbers will always tell one story about Serena and Venus Williams. Nights like this tell another. The sport keeps moving, new names like Maya Joint keep stepping into the spotlight, and the margins grow ever smaller.

What remains is the question that hovered over Arthur Ashe as the sisters walked off together again: how many more times will tennis get to see this partnership on a Grand Slam stage?