Wimbledon: Serena Williams loses comeback match to Maya Joint! Eala makes history for the Philippines! Shelton, Vekic & Svitolina out! Swiatek survives!

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Hello, everyone, and welcome in. It is Wimbledon, last ball drops day two. I am Brenner, here with Carson and Amanda. Thank you for joining me both. And we are gonna start with the big name today. It was Serena Williams. She has come out of retirement in 2026 But unfortunately, this singles run has been cut short, was not able to make it out of the first round, where she lost out to Maya Joint, whose season has been very underwhelming. So if you're Serena, you can't ask for a much better draw, has a wild card. She was able to fight back, saved a match point in that second set tie break, got the early break in the third, but was not able to get it done. Carson, I'll turn to you first. You might be on mute, by the way. Any thoughts about Serena, Maya Joint, her comeback and the match itself?

**Carson** (2:05)
Yeah, this is Maya Joint's first win since January 12th.
That's a very long time ago. She lost, I think I saw on screen, 11 straight matches.

**Brenner** (2:17)
Yeah, on the WTA Tour.

**Carson** (2:19)
Yeah. So, it's been a bit of a brutal season for her. So, very good day for her.
I was impressed with how she played. She played fairly well. First set was very, very good. She served very well today, had 10 aces.
So, I was impressed with how she played today. Obviously, the big story here is Serena, who I think played decently. She served well, returned fairly well. Base line was maybe the thing that let her down a little bit. But just good to see her back on court playing singles. She's obviously played a couple of doubles matches. So, who knows where we go from here? I don't think she's really made any announcements about where or if she's playing more singles next. I think we assume she will play some more at this point. But I think there's good things from today for her to take away from this match and I think we also just saw someone who hasn't played a singles match in almost four years.

**Brenner** (3:26)
Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis.
I thought she was, honestly, maybe better than I expected in terms of a level. And forcing that third set, I thought was super impressive. I wasn't sold when she got that early break in the third. I thought there's still opportunity for the physical fitness aspect to come into the match.
But it was impressive for Maya Joint to hold her nerve. That's what I thought. Amanda, to you, thoughts on Serena's comeback, the match itself, Maya Joint?

**Amanda** (4:05)
Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was honestly a better quality match than I was expecting it to be.
Like, both players served very well, but you also got a lot of good rallies, a lot of really strong tactics. I thought both players were doing what they could to dictate rallies very well. And yeah, like you said, I think it was just so impressive that Maya Joint held her nerve the whole time. You know, she went down that early break in the third set and broke right back. I think she won four games in a row after that. So I was just really impressed with how well she played and how well she handled the moment.

**Brenner** (4:42)
Yeah, yeah. So she does have doubles coming up. She's going to be playing with Venus. So that's kind of what we look to next in terms of Serena Williams. More so the big picture, what comes after Wimbledon, North American Hardcourt swing. And I have to assume that US Open is going to be circled at least. And I think it's almost a no-brainer unless the USTA found something that they didn't like about this first round match and kind of, I think she would be probably willing to play a lead up. Cincinnati, I would assume. You know, something like that. Washington. But we'll just kind of see. I don't know if this was kind of the plan all along. It didn't seem like she was very convinced about playing singles at Wimbledon, but it happened. She fared okay. Who knows what it would look like against maybe a bit of a higher level opponent. But I do think that US Open is probably going to be circled. I won't be surprised if we see her playing singles there.