MELBOURNE — Top Filipina netter Alexandra “Alex” Eala failed once again in her bid to enter into the main draw of a tennis major.
On Tuesday, Eala failed to book a ticket to the 2025 Australian Open Tennis championship, the first major of the year, held in Melbourne.
Alex failed to capitalize on her great performance last week in Canberra where she reached the semis at the Workday Canberra International tennis championships with high hopes of carrying the momentum for the qualifying stage this week.
Alex Eala ranked 148th had Croatian Janna Fett ranked 137th as her first round opponent for the qualifying draw.
Alex started hot and took the first two games of the first set and lead 2-0 while her much older and seasoned rival, ten years her senior, started cold. Fett after getting warmed up took the next 5 games to lead at 5-2 but Eala refused to yield and bounced back a rally of her own buoyed up by the egging of boisterous crowd composed mostly of Filipinos shouting “Let’s go Alex” occupying the grand stand of Court No 15.
After the 5-5 stand off , the Croatian released her 150km per hour missile serve, broke Alex serve and took the close first set on a score of 7-5.
The second set was entirely a different story. Alex slowed down and showed signs of fatigue, massaging her right thigh every now and then. The second set is an all Jana Fett show as the veteran Croatian showered Alex with variety of shots. Alternating her power shots with precise drop shots which most of the time caught Alex off guarded. Fett quickly took the first 3 games of the second set and lead 3-0. Alex showed some semblance of resistance by taking the next two games but that was the last stand she could muster as Janna put the finishing touches with a masterful 6-2 score to finish the match in straight sets.
The Filipino-dominated crowd stood in silence as the two protagonists met at half court and erupted only into a round of applause when Alex waved and bowed to the crowd.
