Eala received tremendous support from the Filipino community, with fans showing up in droves to cheer her on. She relished the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my experiences here in my matches here have really meant a lot for me,\u201d she said. \u201cI think I’ve been able to bring out a certain level and dig really deep in all circumstances, even tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a learning experience for me. It means a lot to have these experiences, even though I wouldn’t consider today’s match a positive experience for me, but down the line I believe it will have a positive impact on my progression as a player.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trailblazing southpaw will head to Miami next \u2014 the scene of her breakthrough. She was ranked No. 140 in the world when she played the Miami Open last year. This year she\u2019ll return as a seeded player.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t speak for the future and what will actually happen when I arrive in Miami,\u201d she said. \u201cMiami last year was a beautiful time for me and it was the start of all of this, but since then I’ve achieved a lot as well.<\/p>\n
“I’ve grown a lot and I’ve had so many good matches, so many tough losses, so much experience since then. And that’s helped me build confidence, self-esteem, and I know that I belong here.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it doesn’t matter if I win the tournament in Miami or if I lose in the first round, I know I’m here and I’m here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eala received tremendous support from the Filipino community, with fans showing up in droves to cheer her on.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-517377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}