{"id":65056,"date":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/65056\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","slug":"alexandra-eala-gearing-up-for-us-open-match-against-close-friend-iva-jovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/65056\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexandra Eala gearing up for US Open match against close friend Iva Jovic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iva Jovic joked that her viral moment with fellow rising tennis star Alexandra Eala at Arthur Ashe Stadium during fan week was a sign of things to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eala, whose popularity has taken the tennis world by storm and has been on full display during the U.S. Open, and Jovic invited their dads onto the court during an exhibition match last week. <\/p>\n

The internet ate it up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess that was a little bit meant to be,\u201d Jovic said following her second-round win over Francesca Jones, setting the stage for two of the sport\u2019s young stars to collide once again this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexandra Eala and Iva Jovic are seen during Stars of the Open at the US Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Robert Bell\/INSTARimages<\/p>\n

Eala punched her ticket<\/a> to the third round when she won earlier in the day over Oleksandra Oliynykova. <\/p>\n

Eala, 21, and Jovic, 18, have faced one another twice already \u2014 a meeting at Roland-Garros earlier this summer and then again at the HSBC Championships in June \u2014 with Jovic coming out on top in both encounters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, this time, Jovic will have to face the full force of Ealamania<\/a> when they face each other in Flushing Meadows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be intense, but I love it, and I like the Filipinos,\u201d she said. They bring some really good energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexandra Eala of the Philippines returns a volley against Oleksandra Oliynykova of Ukraine in the second round of the US Open Tennis Championship on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n

But what makes the meeting so unique is the friendship behind the on-court rivalry.<\/p>\n

Eala has been elevated to superstardom in her native Philippines, but the tennis sensation has said that having a close \u201csisterhood\u201d with some of her fellow players on the tour has helped her on and off the court. <\/p>\n

Jovic and Eala first crossed paths when the latter won the junior U.S. Open in 2022, but the two got closer starting late last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really good because it\u2019s very lonely, and we are traveling basically all the time,\u201d Jovic said. \u201cSo our concept of friendships and family and everything is a little bit warped, and maybe your life outside of tennis isn\u2019t always \u2014 you\u2019re not always home and you don\u2019t see those people very often. So you need to have the people you can lean on through the tour, and not everyone\u2019s open for that and personal choices, but you know it\u2019s obviously very difficult to be friends and also compete.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iva Jovic of the United States returns a shot against Magdalena Frech of Poland during their Women\u2019s Singles Second Round match on Day Four of the 2026 US Open. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s quite a few, especially the younger players, who are very open to that and want to have a good time, want to build friendships, and then on the court it\u2019s fair game, winner takes all, we go for it. Alex is definitely one of those where we both put it aside, and we have a great connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of late Thursday night, it still wasn\u2019t known where Eala and Jovic would face one another with a trip to the Round of 16 on the line, but with a chance that they could find themselves on either Ashe or Louis Armstrong, Jovic\u2019s words ring true about their exhibition foreshadowing what was to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iva Jovic joked that her viral moment with fellow rising tennis star Alexandra Eala at Arthur Ashe Stadium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50,28,2854,463,616],"class_list":["post-65056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us-open","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-match","tag-us-open","tag-us-open-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65056","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=65056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}