After a long rest, Alex Eala is back at it.
The 15-year-old tennis ace showed up in her debut in a W60 tournament of the 2021 World Tennis Tour. She took a rousing win over French foe Margot Yerolymos, 7-6(6), 6-2, Tuesday evening (Manila time) at the All Bellinzona Tennis Club in Bellinzona, Switzerland.
Eala recently rose to her highest ranking in the WTA leaderboard at 715th. She last saw action in the star-studded Miami Open, yielding to Viktoria Kuzmova from Slovak Republic in three sets in the qualifiers.
The 2019 Australian Open juniors doubles champion had to crawl back from a 1-3 deficit in the opening set to even lead at 5-4 with a service hold.
She then needed to string up two consecutive points to close out the first set tiebreak after losing two set points along the way.
That first set win fuelled Eala in the following set, registering a strong 3-0 start.
Yerolymos then broke back and consolidated that break to come to within one at 2-3. The Filipino teen then leaned on her service game to pile up the points. She eventually closed the games and, ultimately, the match.
Eala will face Romania’s Laura-Iona Paar in the following round. She defeated the latter just last February in three sets, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 in the W25 tournament in Grenoble.
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