Alex Eala outlasts Tereza Valentova to reach Hong Kong Open quarterfinals

Alex Eala reached the Hong Kong Open quarterfinals on Nov. 5 with a 6-4, 7-6 (9-7) win over Tereza Valentova, her first victory over the Czech in three attempts, ESPN reported.

Eala, 21, is the world No. 17 and the highest-ranked Filipino tennis player in history. She lost to Valentova twice last year, at the Japan Women’s Open and the Qatar Open. The win at Victoria Park Centre Court was the third time of asking.

The match swung on a tiebreak that nearly got away from her. Eala raced to a 5-0 lead, then watched Valentova win four consecutive points to cut the deficit to 5-4. Eala moved within two match points at 6-4, but Valentova won both to level at 6-6. The tiebreak stayed deadlocked until 7-7, when Eala produced two points to close it out at 9-7.

The first set was its own struggle. Eala broke early and led 3-0, then saw Valentova climb back to 4-4. Eala held serve in a four-deuce ninth game, broke Valentova to love in the 10th and took the set 6-4. She won 19 points behind her first serve in the opening set, nearly double Valentova’s 10.

In the quarterfinals Eala will face world No. 81 Antonia Ruzic of Croatia, who dispatched Wang Xinyu 6-3, 4-6, 6-2.

What the coverage missed

The ESPN report by Miguel Alfonso Caramoan is a thorough point-by-point account, which is useful for anyone who missed the match. But it treats the tiebreak as drama without explaining why Eala keeps ending up in these situations.

Eala has a pattern: she builds leads, then struggles to close them. She lost a Tokyo quarterfinal last month after a costly double fault in a second-set tiebreak, as ESPN reported at the time. Against Valentova she led 5-0 in the tiebreak and nearly blew it. A 5-0 lead in a tiebreak should be insurmountable. That it was not says something about her nerve under pressure, or the lack of it, that the match report does not address.

The other missing piece is Valentova’s age. She is 19, two years younger than Eala, and already pushing the world No. 17 to 9-7 in a tiebreak. The Czech’s ranking was not mentioned in the ESPN report, which makes it hard to contextualize how good or bad this win is for Eala. A straight-sets win over a top-50 player means something different from a straight-sets win over a teenager ranked outside the top 100.

What I think

Eala is the most interesting player in women’s tennis that most Americans have not heard of. She is 21, left-handed, ranked No. 17 in the world and coming off a season that included deep runs at WTA 1000 events. She is the first Filipino to reach that ranking, and she carries the expectations of a country that has never had a tennis star of her caliber.

The tiebreak against Valentova is the kind of win that builds a career, but only if she learns from it. Blowing a 5-0 lead and recovering to win 9-7 shows resilience. Needing to recover at all shows a problem with closing. The best players in the world do not let 5-0 leads slip. Eala is not there yet, and at 21 she does not need to be. But if she is going to crack the top 10, the nerve has to tighten.

The Ruzic match is winnable. Ruzic is ranked No. 81 and has never been past the quarterfinals of a WTA event. If Eala plays the way she played the first six games of the first set against Valentova, she wins in straight sets. If she plays the way she played the tiebreak, it could go three.