Through Maya Joint’s recent surge into the WTA’s top 100 as the No.2-ranked teenager behind Russian prodigy Mirra Andreeva, the US-born-and-raised Queenslander also became the third member of the Australian women’s top-five to have originally represented someone else.
Joint joins Ajla Tomljanović (No.85), Daria Saville (No.107), Arina Rodionova (No.169) and promising youngster Melisa Ercan (No.398, an Orange Bowl alumni currently at Ohio State University) among the active adoptees, while Anastasia Rodionova (Russia), Jarmila Gajdosova (Slovakia) and Sacha Jones (New Zealand) are some of the retirees from a group of nationality-switchers - mostly female, interestingly - that stretches back to the 1980s.
Back then, Czech star Hana Mandlíková was an unlikely and rather odd trailblazer, the four-time major singles winner having opted to play under the Aussie flag during her brief marriage to Sydney restaurateur Jan Sedlák.
But Aussie Hana?
Not exactly.
"None of us actually considered her Australian," Mandlíková’s contemporary, former Grand Slam doubles and mixed champion Liz Smylie, told The First Serve.
"She never played with any of us or played Fed (now Billie Jean King) Cup. I don’t know why she did it, to be perfectly honest. People usually do things for a reason, and I don’t know what that reason was. I have no idea why she felt the need to do that."
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Not that it mattered in any practical sense, for the closest Mandlíková came to representing Australia was as part of the inaugural Hopman Cup field in 1989, partnering 1987 Wimbledon victor Pat Cash, and nor did she soak up any wildcards that might otherwise have been earmarked for younger Australians.
Indeed, many are the benefits of calling a Slam nation home, given the riches that flow from hosting one of the sport’s Big Four events. The latest record crowd at Melbourne Park in January has guaranteed another monster profit, as the dark financial days of the Covid-19 pandemic recede into the distant past.
Little wonder that, in balance-of-trade terms, Australian imports over the decades have dramatically outnumbered those joining the exit queue, with Michigan-raised Joint making no secret of the reason for her move in mid-2023.
"I wasn’t getting the support I wanted or thought I had deserved from the US Federation," Joint, an Australian citizen by virtue of her Melbourne-raised father Michael, told the WTA’s website in Indian Wells, where she qualified for the main draw.
"So we reached out to Tennis Australia to see if we could switch my flag from the US to Australia and if I could get some training opportunities in Brisbane. We had a lot of video calls and back and forth, trying to figure out who I was, pretty much."
Now we know.
A Tennis Australia-funded two-week trial followed at the national academy, and the soon-to-be 19-year-old has already risen to world No.80 in singles and 161st in doubles, reached a maiden WTA 125 final (at the 2024 Polish Open) and logged her first top-20 win (over Donna Vekić at this year’s Hobart International).
Nicole Bradtke, who (as unseeded teen Nicole Provis) reached the 1988 Roland Garros semi-finals the same year Mandlíková swapped national flags, treats each import on a case-by-case basis, including Russian emigre Saville and Florida-based Croatian Tomljanović.
Both, plus the Rodionova sisters and Gadjosova, were helped by amendments to the immigration act passed in 2009 to help accommodate elite athletes whose travel requirements had prevented them from spending the number of months in the country generally needed to obtain an Australian passport.]
"There’s some you raise your eyebrow at, but someone like Dasha has certainly come into the fold and obviously married an Australian (Luke) and played Fed Cup and Olympics, and she’s even got an Aussie twang," Bradtke told The First Serve.
"So if someone’s going to really commit and participate and embrace, I don’t think you have an issue.
"Ajla spends no time here, she’s got no chance of spending any time here, but at least she makes herself available for Fed Cup when she’s not injured."
Nevertheless, Bradtke says she may feel less charitable if she was still playing, given that there are only so many wildcards and other privileges to go around. (Note, too, that this is a discussion about players changing nationalities during or after junior careers spent under a different flag rather than those who arrive here as pre-teens.)
Foreign-born examples include Matthew Ebden (South Africa), Bernard Tomic (Germany, to Croatian parents), Marinko Matosevic (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Jelena Dokić (Croatia, to Serbian parents), and Andrew Ilie (Romania).
And who could not be grateful for Alex de Minaur’s decision to opt for the green and gold despite living from five to 13 in his mother’s homeland of Spain, where one of his junior rivals in Alicante was Alexei Popyrin, whose family had moved first from Sydney to Dubai.
In contrast, could former British No.1 Laura Robson have been a talent that got away? The Melbourne-born daughter of an English oil executive spent the first 18 months of her life here, before the family moved to Singapore, then returned to the UK when Robson was six.
Just to be mischievous, though, this reporter asked Robson in a media conference at Wimbledon early in her injury-truncated career about her Aussie roots and was good-naturedly jeered by territorial members of the British media filling the interview room.
Former world No.3 and 2017 Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic might also have been a strong addition to Aussie stocks had his Yugoslavian parents not found the immigration form-filling less onerous for Canada than Oz when their son was three.
Yet rare are the graduates of the Australian system who go the other way. Dokić’s abusive father temporarily made that decision on his reluctant daughter’s behalf, while WA product Brydan Klein severed a fractious relationship with TA in 2013 by informing Britain’s LTA that he wished henceforth to represent the country of his mother Tricia’s birth.
More recent, and significant, was the defection of top junior Charlie Camus to the French program just a month after being named junior male athlete of the year at the Newcombe Medal function. A more lucrative financial offer was reportedly the reason for a switch Camus’ management nevertheless attributed to a "more comprehensive" development system run by the clay court sibling in the Grand Slam family.
In the other direction has come Croatian Duje Markovina, Croatia’s top-ranked junior boy before an exit orchestrated by his mum, Fanja - an Australian citizen who lived here for 10 years in her youth and organised her son’s navy blue passport at birth.
"Croatia, of course, means a lot to me. I lived my whole life there, and I was born there," Markovina told The Age this year.
"But the Croatian [Tennis] Association is not as strong as Australia’s – nowhere close – so you have to do everything by yourself. I know what my goals are and where I want to get, and this is the best option for me."
But back to Maya Joint - the Australian No.2 who would be the US No.15 had she stayed under the stars and stripes - who is set to make her BJK Cup debut on April 10 in Brisbane, which still leaves time for the girl from Detroit to brush up on her new national anthem.
"I guess she’s just trying to get a start, isn’t she? And as long as she holds up her end of the bargain, I don’t kind of have an issue with that," said Bradtke.
"At the end of the day, she’s winning tennis matches and she’s doing well, so good luck to her."
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