Alex Eala skipped a mandatory WTA 1000 to play the Asian Games for the Philippines. Indonesia’s Janice Tjen made the same request and was denied — the WTA hasn’t ruled on Eala’s case yet.
Alex Eala’s Philippine Arena homecoming has tickets from ₱618 to ₱63,705 — a 103x spread. Here’s the economics behind tiered event pricing, and how it compares to the Federer-Nadal exhibition it’s chasing.
Iva Jovic beat Alex Eala for the third time this year at the US Open on Saturday night, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, closing out a third-round match at Arthur Ashe Stadium that was, for the first time in their rivalry, actually a fight. Eala had never taken a set off Jovic in two prior meetings this season. This time she took one, forced a decider, and led it 4-2 and 4-3 before Jovic leveled at 4-4 and served out the last two games to win it. Eala crossed the court to embrace her friend anyway — a hug that, for a moment, looked less like a rivalry ending than two people who happened to be on opposite sides of it. It was the first of their four meetings to reach a third set, and the first played on a hard court — the surface where Eala has had some of her best results this year. None of that changed the outcome. It did change what the loss means: Eala’s tournament ends in the third round, her …
Alex Eala avenged her Strasbourg loss to Oleksandra Oliynykova at the US Open, 6-1, 6-4, opening with nine straight points. Afterward, she talked patience, pride, and playing her next two rounds against her closest friends on tour.
Alex Eala opened her US Open campaign with a straightforward 6-1, 6-2 win over American qualifier Mary Stoiana — setting up a tougher round two.
EJ Obiena just won his ninth gold of 2026. The three losses before it matter more — one locked his spot at the 2027 World Championships.
Star Magic’s All-Star Games put Filipino and Thai stars on the same court. The basketball was real — but the actual product was proximity.
Alex Eala finally faced a real opponent in Cincinnati — and took a set off a two-time Grand Slam finalist before falling in three. Next stop: the US Open.
EJ Obiena just cleared his best height since the Paris Olympics. A month out from the Asian Games, that’s the story — not the medal count.
Alex Eala became the name the Philippines learned to watch. Her older brother Miko knows what it took to get there because he was there first. There is a particular kind of intimacy that comes from losing to the same person over and over again — and for Alex Eala, that person was her older brother. Before the packed arenas, the national flags, the 4 a.m. wake-ups and the increasingly routine business of beating players whose names once belonged to the television, there was Miko on the other side of the net. Older, better, already further along in the sport. Alex has said she used to practice constantly with him, and even after he had stopped playing for months, she still couldn’t beat him. It’s a funny detail in the origin story of one of the Philippines’ biggest sporting figures, and a more revealing one than the usual family-tree version of the Eala story: Miko didn’t merely grow up alongside Alex’s tennis career. He was part of the environment that made it possible. The siblings …
