Chasing her dream of becoming a world tennis champion, teen athlete Maristella Torrecampo and her father took a gruelling 13-hour bus from her sleepy hillside hometown for her latest match in Manila.<\/p>\n
The 14-year-old’s mum and four siblings could not join to watch her play; her crowdfunded budget was only enough for two round-trip bus tickets and a few days’ worth of meals.<\/p>\n
Barely rested from the long journey, and with only her father cheering her on, Torrecampo crushed her Omani opponent in straight sets 6-1, 6-1 on that sweltering Tuesday afternoon at the Rizal Stadium, keeping alive her dream of following in the footsteps of Alexandra Eala, the country’s newest sports star.<\/p>\n
Torrecampo competed in Manila in July as the Philippines was celebrating Eala’s historic Wimbledon run – one that Torrecampo and the entire nation followed on streaming and social media.<\/p>\n
Eala, 21, went the farthest any Filipina had gone in a Grand Slam event, reaching the fourth round and eliminating defending champion Iga Swiatek of Poland along the way.<\/p>\n
Since her breakout semi-final performance at the Miami Open last year, Eala has re-ignited interest in tennis in the Philippines, a country obsessed with the three B’s – basketball, boxing and beauty queens.<\/p>\n
To young tennis players like Torrecampo, Eala is an inspiration.<\/p>\n
“Like Ate Alex, I want to win at Wimbledon, WTA, and various tournaments around the world,” Torrecampo said, referring to Eala with the Filipino word for elder sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chasing her dream of becoming a world tennis champion, teen athlete Maristella Torrecampo and her father took a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-711290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}