MACKENZIE McDonald has been having the tournament of his life down in Australia.
The 27-year-old American shocked the tennis world by knocking out world No. 2, and arguably the best player of all time, Rafael Nadal in straight sets in the second round of the 2023 Australian Open.
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And watching on from afar is his girlfriend, Maria Mateas.
A fellow tennis pro, Mateas, 23, was originally born in Romania before making her way to the US where she attended Duke from 2018 to 2019.
Currently ranked 439th in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association, and 390th in the doubles category, Mateas reached a career-high single ranking of 284th back in 2018.
Her best result on the ITF Circuit came back in 2018 when she won the 2018 Fort Worth Women’s Pro Tennis Classic.
In 2022, she reached two semi-finals.
Posting mainly training and the occasional travel shots, Mateas has just over 2,500 followers on Instagram, where she and McDonald made their relationship public back in July 2022.
They shared a photo of the two of them together in Chinatown, New York, captioned: “Just a couple of M&M’s [heart emoji]”
Fans swooned over the new couple, with one commenting: “No need to win a grand slam any more!”
Another wrote: “Your post made my day, glad to see smiles like that on u guys”
Since then, they’ve traveled to Hawaii together – where McDonald won the Waikiki Cup – before spending their first Christmas together in California.
And, of course, Mateas was watching on into the early hours of the morning (presumably back home) as her other half achieved what was surely one of his greatest victories to date when he beat Nadal down in Melbourne.
She shared a photo of McDonald, ranked 65th in the world, on her TV with the caption “so proud of you [heart and crying emojis]” followed by “my sweetness.”
Mateas will now surely be waiting with bated breath for McDonald’s third-round match against Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka.
Ranked 33rd in the world, Nishioka has already beaten Mikael Ymer of Sweden and Dalibor Svrcina of the Czech Republic in Melbourne.
If McDonald is able to keep his hot streak alive, it would be the first time he’s made the fourth round at the Australian Open since 2021, and just the third time he’s made it that far in a Grand Slam in his career.
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