Alexandra Eala continued her strong run at the ASB Classic with a dominant second-round win on Wednesday, sweeping past Croatia\u2019s Petra Marcinko 6-0 6-2 to book her place in the next round in Auckland.<\/p>\n
Eala was in control from the outset, racing through the opening set without dropping a game before navigating a brief challenge early in the second to close out the match in straight sets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very happy with the match,\u201d Eala said afterwards. \u201cDifferent conditions from the night session that I played the other day. Overall, a great level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she had great shots, and at one point it became close, but I\u2019m happy pulling off the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The key moment came early in the second set. After Marcinko held serve, Eala found herself under pressure at 0-40 in the following game. She responded by holding firm, preventing her opponent from gaining a foothold in the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely think that helped,\u201d Eala said. \u201cIt\u2019s never easy. The further they go, the harder it is to come back. But she kept fighting, and I just had to stay there and be solid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eala\u2019s aggressive baseline play was again a feature of her performance, but she said knowing when to pull the trigger remains a work in progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s a fundamental part of my game,\u201d she said. \u201cI try to be aggressive when I can and I try to recognise when it\u2019s not the time to be aggressive, and that\u2019s something I\u2019m still working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eala has been one the stars of this ASB Classic and her profile continues to rise. Eala said she is careful not to frame the growing attention as pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people mention the word pressure when they talk about all this hype and attention,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you can\u2019t take anything for granted. Coming from where I come from, and this whole journey I\u2019ve had, this is a dream to play on the Tour and compete against these great players.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I don\u2019t take anything for granted. All the support and all the love is an added bonus, and I\u2019m very grateful for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala continued her strong run at the ASB Classic with a dominant second-round win on Wednesday, sweeping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-222876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}