MANILA, Philippines \u2014 Alexandra “Alex” Eala seeks another shot at world No. 2 Elena Rybakina in the WTA 500 Berlin Open in Germany.<\/p>\n
World No. 33 Eala first battled Rybakina at the Italian Open third round (round of 32) on May 10, with the Filipino netter falling to the Kazakh 4-6, 3-6.<\/p>\n
Seeded No. 2 in this Berlin meet, Rybakina received a first-round bye, waiting for Eala in the second round (round of 16).<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Eala can set up that rematch if she handles the streaking world No. 76 Donna Vekic, who was playing at the HSBC Championships final at press time Sunday evening.<\/p>\n
Eala and Vekic will likely clash on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the same HSBC tournament, Eala reached the round of 16 and fell to Iva Jovic, 2-6, 2-6.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Rybakina made it to the quarterfinals where she fell to Katie Boulter, 5-7, 6-2, 4-6.<\/p>\n Facing “Tita Donna” for the third time<\/p>\n The Berlin draw on Saturday pitted Eala and Vekic for the third time.<\/p>\n Eala defeated Vekic in their first encounter at the ASB Classic first round in New Zealand, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, on January 6.<\/p>\n A little over a week later on January 14, Eala topped Vekic anew, 6-3, 6-4, albeit in an exhibition match at the Kooyong Classic.<\/p>\n The two netters went to Manila for the inaugural Philippine Women’s Open, where the Croatian was fondly called “Tita Donna” by Filipino fans citing her jewelry accessories while playing.<\/p>\n The 29-year-old Vekic actually co-founded a jewelry brand.<\/p>\n Eala reached the quarterfinal in Manila, where she fell to eventual champ Camila Osorio who defeated Vekic in the finale on January 31.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANILA, Philippines \u2014 Alexandra “Alex” Eala seeks another shot at world No. 2 Elena Rybakina in the WTA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32879,18,32125,32877,196,5264,32878,32880],"class_list":["post-36275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-against","tag-berlin","tag-eala","tag-eyes","tag-in","tag-open","tag-rematch","tag-rybakina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}