Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has hailed 17-year-old tennis sensation Alexandra “Alex” Eala not just for winning a juniors Grand Slam title in the United States (US) Open, but also for not forgetting about her Filipino roots during her shining moment.
“What has made our tennis prodigy’s weekend victory truly exceptional...was that she spoke in Filipino during the awarding ceremony and offered her singles trophy to Philippine tennis and to all her fellow Filipinos," Villafuerte said in a statement.
Over to the weekend, Eala brought home the junior Grand Slam singles championship from the US Open at the Billie Jean King Center in New York.
“We salute Alex for bringing great pride to our nation and proving anew the world-class talents of the Filipino in sports and other fields of endeavor," Villafuerte, a former deputy speaker, said.
Like Filipino pole vaulter Ernest John “EJ” Obiena, whose recent string of victories in track-and-field event was capped earlier this month by his upset victory over the World’s No. 1 and Olympic champion Armand Gustav “Mondo” Duplantis, Eala’s Grand Slam win was “yet another testament to the Filipino’s stature as among the best on the global stage", said the veteran solon.
In a still unnumbered House resolution (HR), Villafuerte and three co-authors from Camarines Sur said Eala “sealed her place in history when she became the very first Filipino to win a Grand Slam singles championship".
They noted in their resolution that the only other Filipino with a Grand Slam championship is Francis Casey Alcantara, who won the Australian Open boys’ doubles title in 2009.
“On the professional level, Eala also made history last month when she became the highest ranked Filipino on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour at No. 280, surpassing the No. 284 rank of Maricris Fernandez-Gentz achieved in 1999,” the solons said.
Villafuerte pointed out that Eala’s Grand Slam feat was just the latest in the array of accomplishments of this prodigy, who last year became the first Filipino to win a WTA main draw in defeating Argentinian Paula Ormaechea, now ranked the world’s No. 226, in Cluj-Napocha, Romania.
Eala, at age 12, won the 2018 Les Petit As 14-and-under tournament in Tarbes, France, and made her debut the following year in the 2019 junior Grand Slam US Open. Her junior ranking climbed to its highest at No. 2 after she reached the semifinals in the 2020 French Open girl’s singles in Paris, France.
She joined the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Women’s Circuit in March 2020, and won her first professional match in a tournament in Monastir, Tunisia. She then entered the WTA’s Top 1,000 list after bagging a pro championship at the first leg of the ITF W15 Manacor in Spain in January 2021.
Eala also won another championship at the W25 Chiang Rai in Thailand, and three bronze medals at the 31st Southeast Asian Games in Hanoi, Vietnam
Villafuerte's three co-authors are Camarines Sur Reps. Miguel Luis Villafuerte (5th district) and Tsuyoshi Anthony Horibata (1st district), and Bicol Saro Party-list Rep. Nicolas Enciso VIII.