Alexandra Eala became the first player from the Philippines in the Open era to win a Grand Slam main-draw match, following her first-round victory Sunday at the US Open.<\/p>\n
Trailing 1-5 in the final set, Eala staged a dramatic comeback to force a third-set tiebreak. She needed five match points before ultimately defeating No. 14 seed Clara Tauson, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (11), to advance to the second round in New York after 2 hours and 36 minutes.<\/p>\n
US Open: Draws<\/a> | Scores<\/a> | Order of Play<\/a><\/p>\n And the crowd was behind her for every second of it.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be Filipino is something I take so much pride in,\u201d Eala said after the match. \u201cAnd you know, I don\u2019t have a home tournament, so to be able to have this community here at the US Open, I\u2019m so grateful that they made me feel like I\u2019m home.\u201d<\/p>\n From the opening point, the fans embraced the 20-year-old Filipina who broke into the tennis mainstream earlier this year at the WTA 1000 Miami Open. There, she reached the semifinals after defeating Grand Slam champions Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys and Iga Swiatek.<\/p>\n In her return to U.S. soil, Eala picked up right where she left off.<\/p>\n After trading holds through the first four games, she broke Tauson for a 3-2 lead in the opening set \u2014 moments after the Dane complained to the chair umpire about crowd noise, prompting a warning to the spectators. When Eala extended her lead to 5-3, the umpire again asked fans to quiet down during points.<\/p>\n Eala closed out the first set, but Tauson quickly seized momentum in the second, breaking serve three times to force a decider.<\/p>\n Tauson raced to a 5-1 lead in the third and headed for victory. But Eala \u2014 and the crowd \u2014 roared back. She broke Tauson twice while the Dane was serving for the match, the second break coming after a double fault on break point.<\/p>\n The double fault immediately followed a video review confirming Eala had hit the ball on her side of the net to set up the break opportunity \u2014 a ruling that left Tauson visibly frustrated.<\/p>\n Despite her frustration, Tauson saved a match point moments later to force a third-set tiebreak. She rallied from a 4-8 deficit and saved three more match points, but it wasn\u2019t enough to stop Eala from securing her first Grand Slam main-draw win.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always in the mood for more history,\u201d Eala said. \u201cThis match is one for the books, for me.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn’t her first historic moment in New York, either. In 2022, Eala became the first Filipino player to win a junior Grand Slam singles title, capturing the US Open girls\u2019 championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n She defeated Mirra Andreeva 6-4, 6-0 in the quarterfinals and Victoria Mboko 6-1, 7-6 (5) in the semifinals of that tournament en route to the final, where she beat Lucie Havlickova 6-2, 6-4 to claim the title.<\/p>\n Next on Eala\u2019s to-do list: reaching the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time in her career.<\/p>\n To do that in New York, she\u2019ll need to beat either Cristina Bucsa or American Claire Liu, depending on who wins their first-round match.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala became the first player from the Philippines in the Open era to win a Grand Slam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-90397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90397","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=90397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}