Alex Eala returns to the Miami Open, where a dream run launched a tennis phenomenon
A little less than a year ago, Alexandra Eala was an unproven teenager from the Philippines hunting for her breakthrough in professional tennis . As she sat in the catacombs of Hard Rock Stadium, after her first significant wins at the sport’s top level, the world No. 140 tried to absorb what she had achieved at the 2025 Miami Open, while also trying not to make too much of it.
Eala, who entered the tournament with a wild card, had started the tournament with two wins over Grand Slam champions. After knocking off Jelena Ostapenko in the second round and Madison Keys in the third, an injured Paula Badosa could not play their fourth-round match. In the quarterfinals, Eala met Iga Świątek , another Grand Slam champion and one of the two dominant powers in women’s tennis the past few years.
A couple of years earlier, Świątek had attended Eala’s graduation from the Rafael Nadal Academy. Eala was happy just to get a photo. Then she beat Świątek, too.
Eala was into the semifinals. “Crazy,” Eala said during an interview then, before very quickly switching from wide-eyed newcomer into competitor mode. Regardless of what happened in her next matches, she assumed her life was going to be just as it always had been.
“When things are this new and this big I can’t afford to think about it. I don’t think it should change so drastically so fast, because at the end of the day I am the same person,” she said. After a year that has felt long and short all at once, she is and she is not.
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