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The crowd began to swell in Louis Armstrong Stadium a half hour before 2pm. A fair number of fans were probably there to see Taylor Fritz and Terence Atmane practice, but it was the session after theirs that was the headline attraction on the Friday of the US Open’s fan week. The blue, red and white throughout the stands, spotted on bucket hats and posters and basketball jerseys and flags, signaled who these people were here to see.
This has been the year of Alex Eala, the 21-year-old sensation who has taken the tennis world by storm. At No 18, she is the Philippines’ highest-ranked player ever, its biggest sports celebrity since Manny Pacquiao. The country’s president hosted a reception to celebrate her success, and called for a national celebration after she won her first tour-level title this month at the DC Open. Forbes estimates Eala’s off-court earnings for the past year to exceed $5m, plus $1.7m in prize money, and her agent predicts she will be the world’s second-highest-paid female athlete by 2027.
This is, in many ways, also the US Open of Alex Eala. If she had breakout status in New York last year, her first competing in the main draw, she has returned this summer as a genuine star.
In the week before singles play began, Eala was everywhere. She played alongside Felix Auger-Aliassime in the mixed doubles championship, and joined Serena Williams and Anna Wintour in Arthur Ashe Stadium for an event honoring Roger Federer. She took the Ashe court for the annual Stars of the Open exhibition, with her highlight reel drawing one million views in less than 24 hours.
Her opening match is set for Tuesday night against American qualifier Mary Stoiana at the 14,053-seat Armstrong. The price of resale tickets for the match doubled to nearly $400 after the schedule was announced. Her practice session on Friday with Karolina Pliskova at that stadium filled an entire side of the lower bowl. On Saturday, she hit with Naomi Osaka at the crowded Grandstand, then practiced next to Carlos Alcaraz under the eye of Uncle Toni, Rafael Nadal’s former coach.
“I think at the forefront of everything is gratitude,” Eala told reporters on Friday. “I’m very grateful for the support that my fans give me and that my supporters give me.”
The final grand slam of the season is just the latest stop on her whirlwind world tour. Eala reached the fourth round at Indian Wells and Miami this spring. At Wimbledon in July, she upset defending champion Iga Świątek in straight sets on Centre Court. In DC, her title run included defeats of world No 9 Elina Svitolina, Osaka and top-seeded Jessica Pegula.
With each tournament comes the blitz. Five Philippine newspapers traveled to cover her run at Indian Wells. The DC Open’s organizer said more than 80% of the tournament’s ticket requests regarded Eala. Her debut at the Toronto Open sold out less than 30 minutes after her match time was announced.
“She’s got a really solid head on her shoulders. She seems so grateful for everything,” Osaka said. “Obviously she’s a great player. She brings such an amazing crowd, like, even for practice.”
Growing up in Quezon City, Eala was introduced to the game by her grandfather, playing on painted-over basketball courts. She worked up from local events to tournaments around the world – one of which was at the West Side Tennis Club, the former site of the US Open, in 2013. After sneaking into the grass courts with her brother to hit around, she breezed through the eight-year-olds division; she told one newspaper she would take her trophy and “practice even harder”.
By 13, she had moved to train at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Spain. In 2019, she qualified for the US Open main juniors’ draw for the first time; three years later, she won the girls’ title.
Last year, she burst on to the WTA scene by defeating three major champions at the Miami Open, and made her US Open main-draw debut against Clara Tauson before a packed crowd at Grandstand. After a third-set tiebreak, she became the first Filipino player to win a grand slam match in the Open era. She lost in the second round to Cristina Busca, but the tournament was still a milestone.
“It’s nice to revisit this place and experience it a little bit differently in different stages of my life,” she said Friday with a smile.
The New York area has a prominent Filipino community, with a population of about 260,000 in the metro area. The largest concentration is in Queens; the US Open grounds are a short subway ride away from the neighborhood known as Little Manila.
Through the first week, Flushing Meadows already had the feeling of home. At Friday’s press conference, Eala fielded New York restaurant recommendations from a Filipino journalist in the front row. (She is a self-declared “restaurant person”, and the reporter recommended Naks in the East Village.) She talked about the pair of custom shoes she’d received from Nike that featured the scores from her DC Open run and a floral logo that channels the sampaguita, the national symbol of the Philippines. She spoke of the pride and emotion of seeing the phrase Laban Alex (Go Alex) in crowds and on merchandise.
“It’s really not often that you see our language up among all of these other beautiful languages,” she said. “It’s nice to see that Tagalog is getting the flowers and the Philippines is getting their flowers. It’s well deserved for us.”
Eala will finish the year at home with a December exhibition match at the Philippine Arena, the world’s largest indoor arena. If the event meets its target of 52,000 fans, it could break the record of 51,954 set by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in Cape Town six years ago for the most-attended tennis match on record.
The headlines, the attention, the expectations are a lot to put on the shoulders of a player who hasn’t even reached 100 tour-level matches. She acknowledges that her game is far from complete: her lefty forehand is her greatest strength, but her serve needs improvement. How much growth will come at this US Open? She will begin at Armstrong, the tournament’s second-biggest show court, in the late-night match against Stoiana, the former No 1 on the US college circuit. A matchup with fourth-seeded Coco Gauff could await in the fourth round, should the two players advance that far, and would be ratings gold. The American, who Forbes ranked last year as the world’s highest-paid female athlete ($33m), won their Dubai quarter-final in February; Eala won the first set of their meeting at Indian Wells before Gauff retired.
Amid the mania, Eala says she has used the experiences of this season – traveling, finding her footing on tour, even playing doubles twice with Venus Williams – to stay grounded.
“Although there are certain things like the media and [attention] that make me stand out, I think that I’m a drop in the ocean,” she said.
“I have learned a lot about [Williams’s] mentality on court, but also things about how she championed equal prize money with her sister, and things like the regular player on tour who’s not so exposed to the media, what they’ve had to work towards and what they’ve had to work through to get to where they are now. … That really keeps me humble. It keeps me motivated to work harder and stay among these incredible people.”
