Alexandra Eala won the 2022 US Open junior championship.
Nothing extraordinary there.
Now, factor in that she is from the Philippines!
There’s nothing ordinary about the 18-year-old’s tennis story.
In a country where basketball and volleyball are the two dominant sports by a distant mile — followed by boxing, weightlifting and football — tennis belongs to the second or third rung.
The South-East Asian nation has its share of sports stars.
Indian fans who can jog their memory back to the 1980s will recall Lydia de Vega, the track queen who shared an exciting rivalry with PT Usha and beat India’s Golden Girl in the 100m dash twice at the Asian Games, in 1982 and 1986.
Chess aficionados will note that Eugene Torre, now 72, was the first Grandmaster from Asia.
A majority of Philippines’s Olympic medals (18 of them to date) has come from boxing. That should not be a surprise from the homeland of Manny Pacquiao. But it’s women’s weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, a two-time podium finisher, who fetched the country’s first and only gold so far in 2021.
Men’s pole-vaulter Ernest John Obiena is world ranked No. 2 and a genuine medal contender at Paris 2024.
Tennis? None.
It’s an irony of truly historical proportions. American Dwight Davis, who gave the men’s team competition its championship trophy, was a Governor General of the former US colony in the early 1900s and played a pivotal role in setting up the infrastructure for the game during his tenure.
But, apart from a few notable performances in the 1960s, the game never had a hero to attract the Filipinos. That might be about to change.
Alexa was only two when she first held a racquet in her hand.
“Our son (Michael Francis) is two years older to Alexa. When he started to play tennis at the age of four, at a club where their (maternal) grandfather used to play, Alexa started following him,” said her father Mike Eala.
It was grandfather Roberto Maniego who spotted Alexa’s potential and took her under his wings. More than technique, Maniego taught her the discipline and mentality that laid the foundation for her career.
“I came to tennis because it’s kind of popular in my family. I have a lot of relatives that do sports in general (mother Rose Mary was a swimmer). And it started (as) a way for me to spend time with my grandfather and my brother,” Alexa, who won her maiden doubles title and reached the singles quarterfinals of a women’s $40K event in Pune last week, said.
“So I think my project, my journey has always been really a family project. And we were really the ones to take the initiative, and I’m super grateful to have such a supportive team.
“The journey’s been great — a lot of ups and downs, obviously. And I think that I’m continuously learning more things about myself, about the tour, about tennis, and trying to better myself every day.”
Such was the promise that at the age of 13, Alexa moved to Spain where she enrolled into the Rafa Nadal Academy (RNA) as one of their earliest students.
She had already won the Under-12 crown at Orange Bowl and the Les Petit As, a prestigious Under-14 championship hosted annually in France. Soon after making Manacor her new home, she won a Grade A title — second only to grand slams in juniors — in Cape Town in 2019.
“When she was little, Alexa followed her brother’s training schedule. So she had to step up to that level,” dad Eala explained.
The lock-down during the pandemic was tough on the teenager, living in a foreign country all by herself. But she responded by winning another Grade A title in 2021 and followed it up with the US Open crown a year later — without dropping a set and handing a bagel to Russian prodigy Mirra Andreeva in the quarterfinals.
Alexa, who reached the singles semifinals of another $40K event in Indore on Friday, gave credit to the academy for nurturing her talent but put her success largely down to her grandfather’s vision.
“They (RNA) have given me so much support also. So I have them to thank partly, but I think the key to my success so far was the support of the people around me and the way I was brought up made me more disciplined,” she said.
“I think, well, it was I guess a bit of a mix,” she said when asked if her bonding with Maniego was one of umbilical or a master-disciple kind, “but mostly, you know, we’d spend time on court.
“So a little bit of tough love, of course, but I think in the end, it made me a lot stronger, and I needed it to become mentally strong, to be able to face the challenges that he knew would come further along in my career.”
While her brother is in the final year of playing college tennis for Pennsylvania State university in the US, Alexa is truly committed to the pro tour.
The inevitable question pops up: Is she ready to do for Philippines tennis what Manny has done for its boxing?
“Ooh my gosh! that’s a very far comparison,” she said. “Manny is really a, he is a superstar and a big idol for almost everyone in the Philippines.
“And I remember when he would have a fight, the families would gather in the houses to watch his fight. It’d be like a holiday.
“I’m quite far from that. But he’s a great inspiration and a great person that all the athletes can look up to and learn from.”
Nothing extraordinary there.
Now, factor in that she is from the Philippines!
There’s nothing ordinary about the 18-year-old’s tennis story.
In a country where basketball and volleyball are the two dominant sports by a distant mile — followed by boxing, weightlifting and football — tennis belongs to the second or third rung.
The South-East Asian nation has its share of sports stars.
Indian fans who can jog their memory back to the 1980s will recall Lydia de Vega, the track queen who shared an exciting rivalry with PT Usha and beat India’s Golden Girl in the 100m dash twice at the Asian Games, in 1982 and 1986.
Chess aficionados will note that Eugene Torre, now 72, was the first Grandmaster from Asia.
A majority of Philippines’s Olympic medals (18 of them to date) has come from boxing. That should not be a surprise from the homeland of Manny Pacquiao. But it’s women’s weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, a two-time podium finisher, who fetched the country’s first and only gold so far in 2021.
Men’s pole-vaulter Ernest John Obiena is world ranked No. 2 and a genuine medal contender at Paris 2024.
Tennis? None.
It’s an irony of truly historical proportions. American Dwight Davis, who gave the men’s team competition its championship trophy, was a Governor General of the former US colony in the early 1900s and played a pivotal role in setting up the infrastructure for the game during his tenure.
But, apart from a few notable performances in the 1960s, the game never had a hero to attract the Filipinos. That might be about to change.
Alexa was only two when she first held a racquet in her hand.
“Our son (Michael Francis) is two years older to Alexa. When he started to play tennis at the age of four, at a club where their (maternal) grandfather used to play, Alexa started following him,” said her father Mike Eala.
It was grandfather Roberto Maniego who spotted Alexa’s potential and took her under his wings. More than technique, Maniego taught her the discipline and mentality that laid the foundation for her career.
“I came to tennis because it’s kind of popular in my family. I have a lot of relatives that do sports in general (mother Rose Mary was a swimmer). And it started (as) a way for me to spend time with my grandfather and my brother,” Alexa, who won her maiden doubles title and reached the singles quarterfinals of a women’s $40K event in Pune last week, said.
“So I think my project, my journey has always been really a family project. And we were really the ones to take the initiative, and I’m super grateful to have such a supportive team.
“The journey’s been great — a lot of ups and downs, obviously. And I think that I’m continuously learning more things about myself, about the tour, about tennis, and trying to better myself every day.”
Such was the promise that at the age of 13, Alexa moved to Spain where she enrolled into the Rafa Nadal Academy (RNA) as one of their earliest students.
She had already won the Under-12 crown at Orange Bowl and the Les Petit As, a prestigious Under-14 championship hosted annually in France. Soon after making Manacor her new home, she won a Grade A title — second only to grand slams in juniors — in Cape Town in 2019.
“When she was little, Alexa followed her brother’s training schedule. So she had to step up to that level,” dad Eala explained.
The lock-down during the pandemic was tough on the teenager, living in a foreign country all by herself. But she responded by winning another Grade A title in 2021 and followed it up with the US Open crown a year later — without dropping a set and handing a bagel to Russian prodigy Mirra Andreeva in the quarterfinals.
Alexa, who reached the singles semifinals of another $40K event in Indore on Friday, gave credit to the academy for nurturing her talent but put her success largely down to her grandfather’s vision.
“They (RNA) have given me so much support also. So I have them to thank partly, but I think the key to my success so far was the support of the people around me and the way I was brought up made me more disciplined,” she said.
“I think, well, it was I guess a bit of a mix,” she said when asked if her bonding with Maniego was one of umbilical or a master-disciple kind, “but mostly, you know, we’d spend time on court.
“So a little bit of tough love, of course, but I think in the end, it made me a lot stronger, and I needed it to become mentally strong, to be able to face the challenges that he knew would come further along in my career.”
While her brother is in the final year of playing college tennis for Pennsylvania State university in the US, Alexa is truly committed to the pro tour.
The inevitable question pops up: Is she ready to do for Philippines tennis what Manny has done for its boxing?
“Ooh my gosh! that’s a very far comparison,” she said. “Manny is really a, he is a superstar and a big idol for almost everyone in the Philippines.
“And I remember when he would have a fight, the families would gather in the houses to watch his fight. It’d be like a holiday.
“I’m quite far from that. But he’s a great inspiration and a great person that all the athletes can look up to and learn from.”
