Alex Eala bested her singles and doubles opponents Tuesday to advance to the next round of the W60 Madrid International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament in Spain.
Eala downed Bulgaria’s Lia Karatancheva, 6-4, 6-4, to barge into the second round before she and En Shuo Liang of Chinese Taipei dumped Spain’s Marta Huqi Gonzalez Encinas and India’s Vasanti Shinde, 6-2, 6-1, to move to the doubles quarterfinals.
The singles victory arranged Eala a meeting with 11th seed Daniela Seguel of Chile, who earned an opening round bye.
Her doubles triumph, meanwhile, set her and Liang a date with fourth seed Timea Babos of Hungary and Valeria Savinykh, who survived Japan’s Mana Ayukawa and Australia’s Alana Parnaby, 6-3, 2-6, 10-5.
Eala is competing in her second $60,000 tournament this year. Her first was in the W60 Grenoble in France where she had to go through two qualifying matches before finishing in the main draw second round.
She is coming off a quarterfinal finish in the W25 Madrid in Spain last week where she lost to her doubles partner, Alice Robbe, 7-6 (3), 6-3, in the quarterfinals.