MIAMI — Scour the records. Sift through the score sheets from matches the past few months all over the world, in Trnava, Slovakia, or Bengaluru, India, or Takasaki, Japan.
Other than five consecutive wins in January at a minor tournament in Canberra, Australia, there is little to suggest the immediacy of what has been a breakout week for Alexandra Eala. Yet here she is to take on Iga Swiatek, the most mercilessly dominant women’s player of the last three years, in the quarterfinals of the Miami Open — a WTA 1,000 event, just below the level of a Grand Slam.
Eala, 19, is in a place no player from the Philippines has ever been. No wonder her parents are flying in for the match.
The trailblazing, though, might be the easiest thing for Eala to deal with. She’s been breaking ground for tennis players from her country — an archipelago of 7,641 islands and more than 110 million people — for a while now.
Eala was the first to win the Les Petits As, the premier international tournament for kids aged between 12 and 14. She was the first to win a junior Grand Slam, at the 2022 U.S. Open. She’s the first to get to the cusp of the top 100.
“It’s prepared me to take this in, step by step,” Eala said during an interview underneath Hard Rock Stadium Monday evening.
Minutes before, Eala had heard the news that Paula Badosa had withdrawn from their round-of-16 match with a back injury. She had to figure out whether she was going to watch Swiatek play Elina Svitolina later in the evening.
She was on the fence. It was the second match of the evening session, and would likely finish after midnight. Perhaps getting some rest might serve her better. She’d never done this sort of thing before.
“A lot of new experiences,” she said.
Eala began her stay in Miami with a solid win over American Katie Volynets, a scrambler with a sneaky hard knockout punch when she needs it. Then she knocked off the mercurial 2017 French Open champion, Jelena Ostapenko, in two tight sets. That was her first win over a top-30 player. It was also the first win over a top-30 player for a Filipino player since WTA rankings were first published in 1975.
Then she backed it up by beating Madison Keys, the reigning Australian Open champion and world No. 5, 6-4, 6-2. Two top-30 wins and one top-5 win for Eala; the same for the Philippines.
Keys makes her home in Florida and hits something close to the biggest ball in women’s tennis. Her forehand was too big for top-10 men’s player Casper Ruud to handle at times during a mixed-doubles exhibition before the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.
Eala used her legs to get her feet behind Keys’ shots. She absorbed the power, took aim at the lines and sent Keys on the run in the style of Mirra Andreeva, another teenager who has toppled bigger and more powerful foes lately.
“I knew that she was a great player, I knew that she was a big hitter,” Eala said after the match. “I had to keep my legs on and take the opportunities that I could find.”
Eala owes this Miami Open opportunity to one of the quirks of her sport — the wildcard entry, which allows the owners of tournaments to give a handful of spots at each event to players who would otherwise have to get in through a qualifying competition, if they can even qualify for it.
IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, owns the Miami Open and represents Eala. The company usually awards spots in the tournament’s main draw to some of its promising young players. This year, Eala got one of the golden tickets.
But then she actually had to do something with it, just as she has before. She was born with athletic genes and financial resources. Her mother was a top swimmer in the Philippines and an executive with a leading telecommunications company there. There are plenty of children born with that sort of pedigree. Few of them take the chance to become a top tennis player like Eala has done now, especially in a country where basketball rules the sporting roost.
She has won several medals at the Asian Games, earning bronze in 2023 after losing out in the semifinals to Zheng Qinwen, who would win gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Growing up, it was tough,” Eala said after beating Keys. “You didn’t have anyone from where you’re from to pave the way. Of course, you had many people to look up to around the world, but I hope this takes Filipino tennis to the next step.”
It was her family that brought her to the court. Eala’s grandfather, a tennis buff, introduced all his grandchildren to the sport at his local club. Alexandra and her older brother, Miko, who went to play at Pennsylvania State University, took to it most.
“I never saw myself doing anything else that wasn’t tennis,” Eala said. “I saw as I grew that I was getting better and better and I saw that I always had the potential to make it.”
The first hint arrived when she was 12, with the win at Les Petits As. It earned her a scholarship to the Rafael Nadal Academy in Spain. Her brother got a spot, too, which helped her adjust to leaving her parents at 13 to live in a dormitory on the other side of the world.
“To be there on a scholarship was something that I was not thinking about at all,” she said. “I knew that this is what I wanted to do, so that was a good step towards becoming a professional.”
Nadal has been posting his congratulations to her on social media the past week.
Even after she won the junior U.S. Open title, though, Eala knew she had a long road ahead.
Things can change fast in the career of a tennis player. Sometimes, the door cracks open and a new big thing storms through it, but Eala pushed back against any sort of radical transformation taking place. She knows that there are few overnight sensations these days. Andreeva is the youngest player in the top 100 and she only has one more teenager for company, Australia’s Maya Joint. Eala, at No. 102 in the live rankings thanks to her Miami run, will be hoping to join them soon.
“I’m the same person that I was two weeks ago,” she said. “it’s a big step definitely, but I cannot assume that it’s solidified. I just have to keep my head down, keep working, and results will come if I continue on this path.”
The path has suddenly become a lot more fun, which is plenty important, but not entirely the point, especially with Swiatek on the horizon. She’s seen her close-up before: the five-time Grand Slam champion was the guest of honor when Eala graduated from Nadal’s academy. Now she is a rival like all the rest, in unfamiliar territory for Eala.
“I’ve never been in a major tournament this long, so I’m definitely enjoying that,” she said. “But I’m still hungry, and I’m still motivated.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
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