January 13, 2026<\/p>\n
MANILA \u2013 New year, same Alex Eala.<\/p>\n
After a banner 2025, Eala continued her rise in women\u2019s tennis as she barged inside the top 50 in the latest WTA rankings on Monday.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Filipino recorded a new career-high ranking of World No. 49 from 53. Her previous high was No. 50 last November.<\/p>\n
The Rafa Nadal Academy graduate was coming off a semifinal stint in the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand. She lost to China\u2019s Wang Xinyu in three tight sets, narrowly missing the final round of the WTA 250 event.<\/p>\n
Veteran Ukrainian netter and World No. 13 Elina Svitolina ruled the tournament, topping Wang in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6 (8), on Sunday for her 19th WTA Tour crown. Wang, meanwhile, had the biggest leap from 57th to 43rd.<\/p>\n
The ASB Classic served as a warmup to Eala\u2019s upcoming major stint at the Australian Open, which kicks off on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Eala, however, will first see action at the Kooyong Classic in Melbourne, where she was among the few players invited in the annual exhibition tournament.<\/p>\n
She will compete against No. 70 Donna Vekic, No. 121 Priscilla Hon and Slovakia\u2019s Daniela Hantuchova. The 42-year-old Hantuchova, a four-time Grand Slam winner, is a surprise participant in the event, marking her return to tennis after retiring in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"January 13, 2026 MANILA \u2013 New year, same Alex Eala. After a banner 2025, Eala continued her rise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-405865","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\/405865","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=405865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}