Alex Eala, that crowd-drawing, cheers-eliciting WTA star from the Philippines, and Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic have a lot in common as far as their game styles are concerned.
Both play with a lot of guile, like to take the ball extremely early, hit returns by using the incoming velocity against their foes and grind out points with torrid baseline games.
While the 21-year-old Eala has transformed how tennis matches all over the world are now being watched—and how she fuels herself using the noise of the throng she commands—Bencic likes to play in a super-quiet atmosphere as they part ways on Monday morning in Manila in their round-of-16 clash in the National Bank Open in Toronto, Canada.
“I think it’s great,” Osaka had said of the Eala crowd in Washington after seeing a practice court filled to the brim because Eala was on it. “I think it’s really cool she’s building a new community [of fans].”
This preference of Bencic’s was known on the eve of their first clash, when videos of the Swiss despising crowds in one of her recent matches have made the rounds on social media. That patience of hers will be put to the test when she battles the red-hot Eala for a place in the quarterfinals of the WTA 1000 event.
“She told me congratulations and she said, ‘thanks for letting me be a part of this,’ which is incredibly kind and gracious from her,” Eala said in a post-match conference after her 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 victory. “I think it’s super gracious and a lot of respect for Caty.
“I think there was a huge mutual respect for the great match that we had,” Eala said.
Eala has won her last seven matches, the first five of those resulting in her first tour title in Washington after she came back from a set down to clip American Jessica Pegula in the Mubadala DC Open final.
Pegula later praised Eala and her rabid supporters, saying that such a thing is great for tennis, or something to that effect.