{"id":397924,"date":"2026-01-09T08:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T08:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397924\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T08:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T08:12:07","slug":"philippines-tennis-star-alex-eala-progresses-to-asb-classic-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397924\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippines tennis star Alex Eala progresses to ASB Classic semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-player-guid=\"067c21f8-c2a6-3d19-beeb-5cf5874910ec\" href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=7759\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alexandra Eala<\/a> has continued her excellent form at the start of the WTA Tour season by progressing to semifinals of the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>The Philippines tennis star defeated Poland&#8217;s <a data-player-guid=\"c7ee54cc-9ab2-3349-fc90-34f543660ab7\" href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=1649\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Magda Linette<\/a> 6-3, 6-2 in the quarterfinals on Friday. The pair had faced each other twice previously, with the Pole, The No. 5 seed in Auckland, victorious on both occasions.<\/p>\n<p>She will face China&#8217;s <a data-player-guid=\"bc35eb09-afe2-3f14-cc47-e8ed41c02860\" href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3387\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wang Xinyu<\/a>, the No. 7 seed, in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It feels so good,&#8221; Eala said after defeating Linette. &#8220;Thank you, everybody, for being here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I did my best. I do what I can and if I see an opening, I think it&#8217;s important that I go for it. Today was difficult. Obviously, Magda being such an experienced player and I have [had] difficulties playing against her before, so I&#8217;m happy that I&#8217;ve seen my level increase and my level improve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Eala, the No. 4 seed, commenced her first appearance in Auckland by defeating <a data-player-guid=\"6bd0bac4-145f-3e8b-5662-5400e42ef102\" href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2040\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donna Vekic<\/a> 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the opening round. She then won 6-0, 6-2 against <a data-player-guid=\"7e66c796-9e24-395c-b51a-ec55582f65ef\" href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=8404\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Petra Marcinko<\/a> to progress the the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala has continued her excellent form at the start of the WTA Tour season by progressing to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-397924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397924","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=397924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}