Day or night, Alexandra Eala has moved quickly through the US Open so far.<\/p>\n
After dropping just three games in her opening-round win under the lights on Tuesday, Eala was equally impressive Thursday, defeating Ukraine\u2019s Oleksandra Oliynykova 6-1, 6-4 in 1 hour, 4 minutes to reach the third round in New York for the first time.<\/p>\n
The victory also offered a measure of redemption for Eala, who lost a three-set marathon to Oliynykova at the Internationaux de Strasbourg in May after taking the opening set.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy patience and consistency of my focus, I think that was the key to winning the match today,\u201d Eala said afterward.<\/p>\n
She had good reason to point to both. The No. 17 seed, who reached the Round of 64 in her US Open main-draw debut last year, struck 19 winners against 17 unforced errors while handling Oliynykova\u2019s changes of pace and spin. She also held off a determined push in the second set, breaking serve five times overall.<\/p>\n
Next, Eala will face No. 14 seed Iva Jovic of the United States — one of her good friends. The two linked up for the US Open’s “Stars of the Open” exhibition event during the qualifying week — where they played one set, won by Jovic — when the two reflected on a full-circle moment of stepping on Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
Other notable numbers from Eala’s Louis Armstrong Stadium win included:\u00a0<\/p>\n
6: Oliynykova hit only six winners in the match — and all of them came in the second set.\u00a0<\/p>\n
9: Eala won nine points in a row to start the match, setting the tone early for the afternoon. Oliynykova also hit nine unforced errors in the first seven games.<\/p>\n
11: Eala found success when she came to net, winning 11 of 14 points coming forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
50: Oliynykova only landed half of her first serves in the match, leading to ample opportunities for Eala on return. The left-hander won 11 of the 18 points played when Oliynykova hit a second serve.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Day or night, Alexandra Eala has moved quickly through the US Open so far. After dropping just three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760736","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=760736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}