After defeating future Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova to win Les Petits As—a premier international junior tournament in France for players aged between 12 and 14—in 2018, Eala was offered a scholarship to the Rafael Nadal Academy in Mallorca, Spain. Moving halfway across the world as a young teenager might have daunted others, but Eala jumped at the opportunity, encouraged by her older brother joining her for the first couple of years—and, yes, regular visits from their parents.
“For a 13-year-old, I’d already been pretty well-traveled and exposed to a lot of different cultures,” Eala says. “My friends were also international, so it wasn’t as hard as people would imagine for me to adjust—it’s just the environment that I’m used to. Of course it was difficult to be away from home, to be away from family, but I was just so excited to be there that it took over everything else.”
With her crafty lefty serve and flat, relentless groundstrokes honed at the academy, Eala has emerged as a giant-killer in the women’s game. In her first two years on the main tour, she has notched wins over a slew of Grand Slam champions—including Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, Elena Rybakina, Madison Keys, and Jelena Ostapenko—as well as top-10 mainstays like Jessica Pegula, Elina Svitolina, and Jasmine Paolini. (The day before she arrived in Toronto, Eala became the first Filipina to win a tour-level title at the WTA 500 event in Washington.)
The rest of the players have taken notice. In Toronto, Venus Williams hailed Eala as “a world star,” while Coco Gauff added that everyone in professional tennis should embrace the new Filipino demographic she brings to the game, “because we’re all benefiting from it.” Pegula’s podcast, co-hosted with three American players, including Keys, saw a sudden spike in subscribers after Pegula faced Eala in the Washington final. ”
Eala herself has seen a noticeable shift in the Philippines, where more people are picking up racquets, fighting for court time, and still learning the proper rules. “You have the hardcore sports fans, the girlies who like to dress up, the kids who are super excited to play with their friends—they’re realizing it’s a sport for everyone,” she says.
Following her historic run to the round of 16 at Wimbledon this summer, Eala received a hero’s welcome back home in Manila, with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. even hosting a formal reception for her at Malacañang Palace—something that Eala said she’d never even imagined when she was dreaming big tennis dreams as a kid. “Just being at the presidential palace—or seeing the people who came to greet me at the airport!” she says, incredulous, before adding with a laugh: “I had a meet-and-greet at the mall! I feel like the meet-and-greet at the mall is a very canonical Filipino celebrity experience.”
The attention has meant that she’s had to rethink how she moves around Manila—“especially if I come home straight after these kinds of milestones. It’s quite uncharted territory for me,” she adds. “It’s a learning process.” During her last visit, she relied on a security detail to escort her to work obligations. Otherwise, “I literally just stayed at home,” she says. “Even going to the coffee shop with my dad was a wild experience—people were just all over [us].”