MANILA – Filipina tennis sensation Alex Eala finally won her first WTA Tour championship by completing a reverse sweep in style against world number three Jessica Pegula, 4-6, 6-4, 6-0, in the Mubadala DC Open final early Tuesday (Philippine time) at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center in Washington, DC.
In the championship match that needed two days to finish as stormy weather in the American capital forced the postponement, Eala, nearly a year after a heartbreaking loss to Maya Joint in the Eastbourne Open final, finished the job in dominating fashion to finally call herself a bona fide WTA Tour champ.
Down 4-6 in Set 1, Eala held a 2-1 lead in Set 2 before the rain delay.
When play finally resumed, both Eala and Pegula held serves until the former scored a crucial break point to force Set 3.
The final set was virtually all-Eala as she broke Pegula’s serve in Games 2 and 4 to eventually go 5-0 up.
Eala even had a chance to sweep Game 6 when she was 40-0 up until Pegula finally scored a point to save a break point.
However, Pegula still lost steam as she swung the ball too wide to her left in the next play, eventually giving Eala the deciding set bagel and the championship.
Eala became the first Southeast Asian player to win a WTA 500 tournament, even as she also captured her third pro title overall, counting the two WTA 125 chips she already got.
“I think I warmed up a thousand times. It was difficult, I think … at the same time, it’s happened to me a lot; rain delays a lot of times in my life. I think this is just kind of another one of those, although it was a lot higher stakes. But I think I was able to take my time and take those learnings from the first half of the match and do my best to apply them in the second, and I think it worked pretty well,” said the 21-year-old Eala in a news release on the WTA website.
The left-hander eliminated No. 2 seed Elina Svitolina (6-3, 6-4), No. 3 seed Naomi Osaka (6-4, 6-2), No. 7 seed and defending champion Leylah Fernandez (6-2, 7-6 (7)) and 2024 Paris Olympics champion Zheng Qinwen (4-6, 6-4, 6-1) on her way to the final.
“At the beginning of the week, there is no way I would have thought that I would be holding this trophy … These things kind of creep up on you, and I hold these moments really close to me,” said Eala, who is expected to break into the Top 20 for the first time.
By virtue of being currently at number 29 in the WTA world rankings, Eala earned a first-round bye in the WTA 1000 tournament.
The singles gold medalist at the 2025 Thailand SEA Games will kick off her campaign in the main draw of the Canadian Open campaign on Aug. 5 in Ontario. (PNA)
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