Few players have enjoyed a stronger stretch on the WTA Tour lately than Alexandra Eala. The Filipino star continued her surge Wednesday with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Julia Riera in 1 hour and 17 minutes to reach the quarterfinals in S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n
S\u00e3o Paulo: Scores<\/a> | Draws<\/a> | Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n It marks Eala\u2019s third quarterfinal of the season, coming on the heels of her WTA 125 title in Guadalajara and a first-round upset of Clara Tauson at the US Open in recent weeks.<\/p>\n Next, she\u2019ll face Indonesia\u2019s top-ranked player, Janice Tjen, who dropped just one game in a 6-1, 6-0 rout of Martina Okalova earlier in the day.<\/p>\n Comfort and control for Eala in S\u00e3o Paulo<\/p>\n Eala has looked at ease throughout the tournament.<\/p>\n \u201cI said the other day that the Brazilians are super hospitable,\u201d Eala said after the match. \u201cThat\u2019s one thing I think you have in common with the Philippines, so I\u2019m feeling at home. I loved the atmosphere tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n She fed off the energy, winning the first four games of the match and converting all three break points to take the opening set in just over 30 minutes.<\/p>\n The second set was more competitive. Eala broke in the first game, but Riera responded immediately. Later, Riera saved four match points before the No. 3 seed finally closed out the win.<\/p>\n Eala now holds a 2-0 career record against Riera.<\/p>\n Through two matches in Brazil, Eala has spent less than 2 1\u20442 hours on court, including a 70-minute victory over Yasmine Mansouri in the first round.<\/p>\n Tjen proves first-round win was no fluke<\/p>\n If there were any doubts about Tjen\u2019s ability to follow up her upset of Leolia Jeanjean, she silenced them with a commanding win over Okalova.<\/p>\n After serving up a first-set breadstick, Tjen delivered a second-set bagel in a match that lasted just 52 minutes.<\/p>\n She faced only one break point while forcing 12 of her own, converting six. Despite landing just over 42% of her first serves, she won nearly 86% of those points.<\/p>\n It was the first WTA level-meeting between Tjen and Okalova, with Tjen taking the edge in their head-to-head.<\/p>\n With the win, Tjen becomes the first Indonesian woman to reach a WTA quarterfinal since Angelique Widjaja in Bali in 2004.<\/p>\n Eala, Tjen set for first career clash<\/p>\n After cruising through their early rounds, Eala and Tjen now face a tougher test in each other.<\/p>\n It will be their first career meeting at pro level. They met three times as juniors in 2018-19, with Eala winning twice.<\/p>\n Eala is aiming for her third WTA semifinal of the season. Tjen, competing in just her second WTA-level tournament, is seeking her first.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few players have enjoyed a stronger stretch on the WTA Tour lately than Alexandra Eala. The Filipino star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":{"0":"post-136123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}