After defeating future Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova to win Les Petits As\u2014a premier international junior tournament in France for players aged between 12 and 14\u2014in 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\u2014and, yes, regular visits from their parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a 13-year-old, I\u2019d already been pretty well-traveled and exposed to a lot of different cultures,\u201d Eala says. \u201cMy friends were also international, so it wasn\u2019t as hard as people would imagine for me to adjust\u2014it\u2019s just the environment that I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
With her crafty lefty serve and flat, relentless groundstrokes honed at the academy, Eala has emerged as a giant-killer in the women\u2019s game. In her first two years on the main tour, she has notched wins over a slew of Grand Slam champions\u2014including Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, Elena Rybakina, Madison Keys, and Jelena Ostapenko\u2014as 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.)<\/p>\n
The rest of the players have taken notice. In Toronto, Venus Williams hailed Eala as \u201ca world star,\u201d while Coco Gauff<\/a> added that everyone in professional tennis should embrace the new Filipino demographic she brings to the game, \u201cbecause we\u2019re all benefiting from it.\u201d Pegula\u2019s podcast<\/a>, co-hosted with three American players, including Keys, saw a sudden spike in subscribers after Pegula faced Eala in the Washington final. \u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cYou have the hardcore sports fans, the girlies who like to dress up, the kids who are super excited to play with their friends\u2014they\u2019re realizing it\u2019s a sport for everyone,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Following her historic run to the round of 16 at Wimbledon this summer, Eala received a hero\u2019s welcome back home in Manila, with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. even hosting a formal reception for her at Malaca\u00f1ang Palace\u2014something that Eala said she\u2019d never even imagined when she was dreaming big tennis dreams as a kid. \u201cJust being at the presidential palace\u2014or seeing the people who came to greet me at the airport!\u201d she says, incredulous, before adding with a laugh: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The attention has meant that she\u2019s had to rethink how she moves around Manila\u2014\u201cespecially if I come home straight after these kinds of milestones. It\u2019s quite uncharted territory for me,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s a learning process.\u201d During her last visit, she relied on a security detail to escort her to work obligations. Otherwise, \u201cI literally just stayed at home,\u201d she says. \u201cEven going to the coffee shop with my dad was a wild experience\u2014people were just all over [us].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After defeating future Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova to win Les Petits As\u2014a premier international junior tournament in France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,7604,343],"class_list":["post-879737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-textaboveleftsmall","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879737","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=879737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}