{"id":17457,"date":"2025-08-25T06:04:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=17457"},"modified":"2025-08-25T06:04:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:04:03","slug":"over-the-moon-filipino-eala-bags-historic-first-at-us-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=17457","title":{"rendered":"‘Over the moon’: Filipino Eala bags historic first at US Open"},"content":{"rendered":"
Alexandra Eala produced a jaw-dropping late comeback to carve out a piece of tennis history at the US Open on Sunday, becoming the first player from the Philippines to win a Grand Slam singles match with a first round upset of Danish 14th seed Clara Tauson.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old from Quezon City recovered from a 5-1 deficit in the deciding set to score a thrilling 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (13\/11) triumph.<\/p>\n

“I’m super over the moon with what I was able to do today, especially coming back in the third,” Eala said. “It’s a very special win for me.”<\/p>\n

Eala’s breakthrough comes at the end of a season where she had already served notice of her talent.<\/p>\n

She took down Australian Open champion Madison Keys and former world number one Iga Swiatek during a giant-killing run to the semi-finals of the Miami Open in March.<\/p>\n

But Sunday’s triumph on the Grandstand court at Flushing Meadows catapulted the youngster — who won the US Open girls title in 2022 — into the history books.<\/p>\n

“I’m so blessed to be the first to do this,” Eala said. “I take so much pride in representing my country. It makes what I do bigger than myself, and it adds meaning to what I do.”<\/p>\n

Eala collapsed to the court after her victory, later revealing that past experiences had helped her dig deep to clinch the tiebreak.<\/p>\n

“I was just so over the moon, and it was just such a rush of emotions,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I think so many factors made the match so special. I’ve been on the losing side of these tight tiebreaks before, so to be on the winning side, it’s very memorable.”<\/p>\n

Eala said she plans to take the same never-say-die mentality into the remainder of the tournament.<\/p>\n

“The key for my upcoming match is just to come in with the same mentality, same fight,” she said. “Right now I’m just focused on recovering.”<\/p>\n

Eala’s win came on the same day that another player from Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s Janice Tjen, scored another upset to send 24th seed Veronika Kudermetova crashing out.<\/p>\n

“I’m so happy to see the progress of tennis in Southeast Asia in general,” Eala said. “I’ve known (Janice) for a long time, so I’m happy for her. I’m happy that players from this region are coming up and starting to be successful.<\/p>\n

“I’m so happy for her, and it’s nice to see someone that you grew up with on the biggest stages in the world.”<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexandra Eala produced a jaw-dropping late comeback to carve out a piece of tennis history at the US Open on Sunday, becoming the first player from the Philippines to win a Grand Slam singles match with a first round upset of Danish 14th seed Clara Tauson. The 20-year-old from Quezon City recovered from a 5-1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}