FILIPINO tennis sensation Alex Eala is set to clash with 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in the quarterfinals of the 2026 Mubadala DC Open on Saturday morning (Manila Time) at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center, Washington DC, United States.<\/p>\n
Even tough Eala, who is ranked 28th in the world, is considered an underdog against the world No. 10 Svitolina, the Filipina holds a 1-0 advantage in their head-to-head match-up after defeating the Ukrainian, 6-3, 6-4 at the Berlin Open last June.<\/p>\n
Eala punched a quarterfinals ticket in Washington after surviving a grueling second set battle against last year\u2019s champion Leylah Fernandez of Canada to prevail, 6-1, 7-6, in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everything\u2019s kind of a blur right now. I really made an effort to stay in the moment. And I was ready for everything that could have happened. Luckily, it went my way,\u201d Eala acknowledged after crawling back from a 1-5 deficit\u00a0over\u00a0Fernandez, whose mother is from the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Now facing the higher-seeded and more seasoned Svitolina in the quarterfinals, Eala is aware that her opponent has vengeance in mind.\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 Still, the 21-year-old Filipina remains unfazed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s just part of my character. But then again, every single player here is a fighter. All of us here are fighters. Whether it\u2019s my opponent today, yesterday, tomorrow, you can never count anybody out,\u201d Eala said.<\/p>\n The 31-year-old Svitolina, who received a first-round bye, outplayed \u00a0No. 108 Polina Kudermetova of Uzbekistan in straight sets, 7-6, 6-4, on Friday morning to march into the quarterfinal round.<\/p>\n Svitolina is the highest-ranked Ukrainian player in the Women\u2019s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour, reaching a career-high of No. 3 on Sept. 11, 2017.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian\u2019s recent achievement was topping the 2026 Italian Open in Rome, marking her biggest\u00a0tournament victory in the WTA Tour since 2018.<\/p>\n She claimed five high-level titles, including three crowns at the Italian Open in Rome (2017, 2018 and 2026).<\/p>\n On the other hand, Eala captured the 2026 Birmingham Open title (WTA 125) last June 7.<\/p>\n On record, Eala has reached a unique feat of scoring victories over all three 2024 Paris Olympic medalists after defeating gold medalist Qinwen Zheng in Washington, silver medalist Donna Vekic in the ASB Classic and Berlin Open and bronze medalist Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon this year.<\/p>\n If Eala can hurdle past Svitolina, she will next face the winner\u00a0of the match between No. 13 Naomi Osaka of Japan and \u00a0No. 71 Elisa Cocciaretto of Italy in the semifinal round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILIPINO tennis sensation Alex Eala is set to clash with 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Elina Svitolina of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1047,822,16739,16740,1516,5990,11289,16738],"class_list":["post-44957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elina-svitolina","tag-eala","tag-elina-svitolina","tag-familiar","tag-foe","tag-on","tag-saturday","tag-svitolina","tag-takes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}