{"id":787912,"date":"2026-09-30T23:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T23:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787912\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T23:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T23:02:14","slug":"alexandra-eala-named-to-prestigious-time100-next-2026-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787912\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala named to prestigious TIME100 Next 2026 list"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandra Eala has been named to the TIME100 Next 2026 list<\/a>, the magazine’s annual collection of the world’s most influential rising stars.<\/p>\n

Eala was the only tennis player on the list of “leaders who are shaping the future,” broken up into five categories: Phenoms, Artists, Leaders, Innovators and Advocates.<\/p>\n

Eala was selected in the Innovators category, and 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal wrote a blurb on time.com<\/a> about her game, her maturity and poise, and her breakthrough on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz.<\/p>\n

“One of her greatest strengths is precisely her ability to listen, learn, and keep improving,” Nadal wrote<\/a>. “But perhaps more importantly, Alex remains a wonderful person — warm, approachable, and humble. It isn\u2019t easy to handle becoming a true phenomenon at such a young age, and she deserves a lot of credit for keeping her feet on the ground.<\/p>\n

“Now, all that remains is to keep enjoying watching her progress.”<\/p>\n

Nadal has known Eala since 2018, when she arrived at the Rafa Nadal Academy as a 13-year-old. Seven years later, Nadal recounted, she was the first person he played with after his retirement.<\/p>\n

“One day, she asked whether I felt like hitting with her for a while,” Nadal wrote. “For the first time in many months, I picked up a racket and played again.”<\/p>\n

Champions Reel: How Alexandra Eala won Washington 2026<\/p>\n

Eala first broke on to the scene in 2025, when she beat three Grand Slam champions to reach the Miami final as a wild card. She’s built on that momentum in the year and a half since, going from No. 140 in the PIF WTA Rankings to No. 18. In the process, she’s attracted a massive following and fan base not only in her native Philippines, but also globally. She’s broken milestone after milestone among Filipina players, and has helped attract fervent interest from a country that had never produced a player in the Top 100.<\/p>\n

The crowning achievement of her career came earlier this summer, when she won her first career WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz title in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala has been named to the TIME100 Next 2026 list, the magazine’s annual collection of the world’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787912","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\/787912","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=787912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}